City Lights (1931)

QFS No. 159 - The invitation for December 4, 2024
It’s that time again at Quarantine Film Society – time to watch a Silent Film! Long time followers may recall our first one The Freshman (1925, QFS No. 20) and our most recent Sunrise: A Tale of Two Humans (1927, QFS 104) – both exemplary works of filmmaking, especially F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise. So now we return to the land of not speaking words out loud as we do about every fifty or so selections it seems.

City Lights is one of the classics of the Silent Era (or any era), directed by and starring the most iconic personality of the beginning of Hollywood. The funny thing is that this film was made after “talkies” have taken over movies. City Lights came out four years after The Jazz Singer (1927) introduced sync sound into motion pictures, but Chaplin preferred staying in the silent realm and made arguably his two greatest films in the decade after movies became almost universally a full sound-and-picture affair. His fantastic Modern Times (1936) incorporates some sound effects and voices in the film to enhance the storytelling, but his character and the others in the film communicate mostly nonverbally.

This week’s selection City Lights is not only one of Chaplin’s finest as The Tramp character, but also considered one of the greatest films ever made, to the extent that you trust the oft-cited/derided British Film Institute Greatest Films of All Time list. City Lights checks in at No. 36, just after Pather Panchali (1955) at No. 35 and tied with M (1931), Fritz Lang’s early sound film masterpiece from Germany the same year. This is one time where I feel like maybe, just maybe, the BFI list has got it right.

In any case, City Lights is a film I haven’t yet seen. Mostly because, you know, silent film and I’m late to watching the great ones. Still I continue to learn more and more how important these silent movies are to watch for today as a filmmaker. Without language and dialogue as a crutch, the filmmaker is forced to be visual, innovative, and engaging to keep the audience interested. Framing and juxtaposition of actors in space become crucial to tell the story without sound. In that era, Hollywood, too, was in its infancy so there was no “algorithm” (to use today’s parlance), no accepted structure to make a successful film. So the films have a loose, free feel, unmoored by storytelling convention and cliché. And if a movie has endured until the next century, as City Lights has, then all the more reason to watch, study and, more importantly, enjoy it.

So let’s cozy up with Chaplin and City Lights – and join us to discuss.

City Lights (1931) Directed by Charles Chaplin

Reactions and Analyses:
Everything in City Lights (1931) pays off in the final shot – the very final shot – of the film. This is a remarkable feat of filmmaking and storytelling. The entire film, of course, contains and exhibits Charlie Chaplin’s extraordinary command of the medium and there are moments throughout that contain beauty and pathos and humor and realism.

But it’s the final image that pays it all off. How few films can claim that, that everything builds to a final, joyful, emotional apex? There’s little wonder City Lights has endured into the sound era, through the ubiquity of color films, and into the next. And what we see that allows this film to endure is Chaplin mastery of setups and payoffs. The entire film is a masterclass in paying off the ending, but he does it throughout in ways big and small. There’s not a wasted moment in City Lights.

Along the way, we’re treated to Chaplin’s Tramp, the downtrodden, well-meaning everyman and the first image we see of him sets the tone. City officials are unveiling a new statue, giving meaningless self-important speeches. We don’t even know what they’re saying, but Chaplin uses a sort of “kazoo” in this hybrid silent-sometimes-sound film, as he does later in Modern Times (1936). The kazoo sound has the officials quacking away – which is perfect on so many levels. First, Chaplin was pressured into using sound for City Lights so we put ourselves in the mindset of the 1931 viewer, this is both a nod to that pressure and also a jab at it. (Or, a middle finger, if you will.) It’s Chaplin saying oh you want sound? Here ya go!

The Tramp (Charlie Chaplin), with the prefect place to sleep overnight in City Lights (1931).

But also, this is a clever use of sound. How often do we hear city officials blather on about the unveiling of a new public work or a monument, as opposed to using what they can to prevent people from sleeping on, say, that new monument during it’s unveiling. And here is where Chaplin is a visual comedic genius. He juxtaposes city elites proclaiming greatness all while a homeless man sleeps on that very symbol of greatness, bursting their bubble so to speak.

This man only speaks kazoo.

It’s all about the class divide and class struggle in this and other Chaplin films. Although specific for the 1930s, it’s definitely recognizable today and it’s the underlying theme of City Lights. Take the storyline with the Eccentric Millionaire (Harry Myers). When drunk, he’s magnanimous, grateful that the Tramp  save his life by preventing him from committing suicide. He treats him to a drunken night on the town and even later offers him his car. Not to use, to have. He doesn’t need it.

Alcohol has removed the live between the classes, has removed class distinctions and instead allows the Millionaire to see the Tramp as a human, a person worthy of being seen as someone good and decent. But when sober, he has no idea who the Tramp his. He’s never seen him before and he definitely would never ever been seen with someone of Tramp’s standing.

This man (Harry Myers) should probably not be driving. “Am I driving?” he even says.

Again, this is all set up for the ending of that storyline. Later when the Tramp is given money by the drunk Millionaire to save the Blind Girl (Virginia Cherrill) and her grandmother (Florence Lee) from being evicted, it’s all thwarted when the Tramp is accused of being a burglar due to sober Millionaire realizing his money was missing.

Even in the scene when the Blind Girl and the Tramp first meet, there you get the perfect set up for the main premise of the film. In it, Tramp is smitten by the flower girl. But how to convey to a person who is blind that the Tramp is someone rich? With sound, oddly enough. She hears a car door slamming and driving away, assuming it’s the Tramp who left without taking his change. And only wealthy people have cars, so it stands to reason that’s what he is - one of the elites.

And the Tramp plays this up – shows up later in a very fancy car, buys all her roses with money from the Millionaire, then later still promises to save her from eviction. (This too shows Chaplin’s attention to detail – when at her home, the Grandmother is never around because she would’ve seen the Tramp’s clothes and know he’s destitute.)

The Tramp with the Blind Girl (Virginia Cherrill) who has no reason to believe he’s anything other than a wealthy elite.

So later, when the Blind Girl has gotten surgery to give her vision, thanks to the Tramp’s money “stolen” from the Millionaire, she does not know what the Tramp looks like but only believes that he’s wealthy. And he, having spent time in prison for that alleged theft, can’t find her at her usual corner. He doesn’t realize that he helped them start a corner flower shop. So when he sees her and knows who she is, she doesn’t think he’s anything but another homeless man shuffling along, picked on by the same kids who picked on him earlier in the film.

The Tramp, seeing her, astonished, realizes she can see. But speechless – I found myself urging out loud at the screen for him to say something – surely the sound of his voice will be what makes her realize this is her long-lost love. (I realize the irony in this, a silent film.) And then finally, it’s not words but touch that do it – how perfect in this film that Chaplin is making at the start of the sound era. He doesn’t use sound at all, but the tactile visual. She feels his hand and knows – this is the hand she felt before, when she couldn’t see.

It’s touch not speech, not sound, that let’s the Blind Girl know that this is the man she fell in love with before she could see.

And then, the delicate last lines. You can see now? Yes, I can see now. Followed up by that masterful final shot, that endure close up – probably the only real close up in the film – in which the Tramp, overcome with glee, joy, and also something of a bit of sadness or maybe regret. The grin, the flower. It’s utterly perfect. I found myself unable to restrain tears from welling up.

The very final, masterful shot of the film.

And it’s the final shot of the film. No embrace, no kiss, no montage of them falling in love or getting married. We just know that this, this is the most satisfying, earned conclusion to this story.

When you eat soap, you talk in soap bubbles - that’s just science!

All of this would be enough of a fantastic dramatic narrative, but I’m leaving out the thing that sets it apart as a film – the humor. There’s the entire boxing sequence – also rife with setups and payoffs – that is an uproarious balletic performance. One QFS discussion group member pointed out how this is clearly inspiration for Looney Toons cartoons that emerge about a decade later. The soap versus cheese bit, when the man eats the soap and bubbles come out of his mouth – this becomes a cartoon convention for the rest of time, but City Lights must be where it began. The entire boxing sequence could be straight out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Even the drunken revelry at the club shows Chaplin’s astonishing gifts as a physical comedian.

Bugs Bunny was likely in the audience of this fight, taking notes.

The Tramp launching himself at his opponent is a spectacular feat.

The boxing sequence does get special note in that there’s a moment in which we think that the Tramp might win, might then get the money he needs to save the Blind Girl’s home. But he’s knocked out and loses – his opportunity lost. One member of the QFS group pointed out it would’ve been disappointing and too easy if he won. The Tramp was unlikely to win but by pure spirit and moxie had a chance. In the end, though, reality settled in and he was defeated.  

And that’s what Chaplin also does extremely well – he doesn’t live in sadness for too long, but also not in joy. His pacing is superb and we don’t spend time in one emotion for too long. He stares longingly at the Blind Girl after she think he’s left and he’s now cowered nearby by the fence. But the revelry doesn’t last – she dumps her dirty flower water towards the fence, not knowing it’s his face that gets hit. After he’s knocked out, he runs into the Millionaire again and this leads to maybe there’s a chance he’ll give him the money to save the Blind Girl’s home.

The drunk Millionaire, social and class boundaries dissolved by alcohol, permit him to see the Tramp as a human, a friend, and, apparently, worthy of a smooch.

Chaplin brings us high and low and we end where he intends – in joy, as seen in the Tramp’s eyes and expression. I tried to think of other films where the final shot, the very final shot, pays off the entire film and I’m struggling to find one that’s as satisfying as this. Planet of the Apes (1968) is probably the greatest final shot in its surprise and punch. The last image of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) is clever and ingenious. THX 1138 (1972) gives us the glorious sun, the final escape of 1138. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is certainly a candidate in its enigmatic way. Inception (2010) is a great one that leaves your head scratching and debating. Before Sunset (1999) – the last line of the film, when I saw it in the theater, elicited an audible gasp and reaction. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), the duo going out in a blaze of glory is certainly memorable. I’d even throw in The Wrestler (2008), with his the final leap from the ropes in what we assume is his last is truly terrific.

(Below - spoiler alert: final shots of note from THX 1138, 1971, Before Sunset, 1999, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969, Planet of the Apes, 1968, The Wrestler, Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981, and of course City Lights.)

And on that list belongs the last moment of City Lights. Earned, a climax, simple. And, importantly, nothing more to be said. Which is how Chaplin wanted it.

Brazil (1985)

QFS No. 158 - The invitation for November 27, 2024
Brazil is directed by Terry Gilliam, the mad-genius behind (and part of) Monty Python’s Flying Circus, the still-quotable Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Time Bandits (1981), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), The Fisher King (1991) in which Mercedes Ruehl* won an Oscar, the terrific 12 Monkeys (1995) and other films that are all a little ... askew. What a fascinating career Gilliam has had as a comedian, animator, actor and filmmaker. This is our first of his movies we’ve selected for Quarantine Film Society.

And this one is a favorite of mine – darkly funny, unpredictable and visually captivating, stunningly so at times. I first saw Brazil after someone recommended it to me while a student (…fellow…) at the American Film Institute and the movie stuck with me immediately. The story of how Brazil was made and released has become something of a dark tale itself. There are three versions of the movie that exist in the world – the original European release that’s 142-minutes long, the American version that’s 132-minutes long (probably the one you’ll find out there on streaming), and the so-called Sheinberg edit also known as the “Love Conquers All” version that’s only 90-minutes long. I’ve seen some aspects of each of these, and whatever you do, do not watch the Love Conquers All version because it’s an abomination.

Is now the right time to watch a film about trying to live under the gaze of a dystopic government with a crippling and heartless bureaucracy on the eve of what could be the downfall of representative democracy in this country? Sure why not. Good to know what’s in store for us! Eh.

Anyway, join watch and and discuss below!

*Not only was she later to be directed by yours truly in an episode of television, she also has the distinction of her first and last name sounding like a complete declarative sentence.

Brazil (1985) Directed by Terry Gilliam

Reactions and Analyses:
There’s a sequence in Brazil (1985) that captures so much of what the film attempts to say about society, progress, perception versus reality and also captures director Terry Gilliam’s unique vision, all in one 20-second (or less) moment and series of shots.

Sam driving in his miniscule car in his futuristic city.

Sam (Jonathan Pryce) is driving in his ludicrously tiny car, dwarfed by the wheels of a huge construction vehicle driving next to it. Then, the shot cuts from Sam’s face to what we presume is a POV shot of him driving through the city which we haven’t yet seen. This sort of cut is a conventional type of edit where we as the audience sees what he’s seeing.

Oh what a nice looking city they’ve got in Brazil.

It’s a driving point-of-view through a sleek, futuristic world with what appear to be cooling towers above uniform, efficient-looking buildings. But then, as the shot keeps moving (again, as though we are in the car looking out the domed windows as Sam is doing), suddenly a giant head of a disheveled-looking man holding a beer bottle appears above the buildings.

Wait, what’s going on?

The moment is long enough to give us a sense of what is going on? Is this some sort of giant? But then it cuts to a wide shot of the actual city – this was just a model in a glass case of what the city was proposed to look like, with this drunken fellow now peering into it and Sam’s car driving past the model in the background through what the city actually turned out to be.

It was just a model!

This sequence is illustrative of Gilliam’s work generally and themes of Brazil specifically in the following ways. First, it toys with filmic convention – we have an expectation of what we should be seeing (a POV) but the gag is a misdirect, played for laughs. But it’s also a commentary. People (government or businesses) promising one thing but the reality ends up being something totally different – both the shot and the subject in the shot (the cityscape). The wide shot shows the same towers as the model, but run down, graffiti covered. It’s no mistake that these buildings are named “Shangri-La Towers,” an elevated name for a dilapidated place.

Hidden in this is a third aspect: who is to blame for these promises not being kept? And are we simply powerless to hold anyone accountable?

We are victims of indifference to our circumstances in an uncaring world, Brazil tells us. Bureaucracy (paperwork!) is dehumanizing – no one takes responsibility because in a world where authority is both decentralized and opaque, there’s no one person to blame. Everyone is at fault therefore no one is. As perfectly described in this exchange:

Sam Lowry: I only know you got the wrong man.

Jack Lint: Information Transit got the wrong man. I got the right man. The wrong one was delivered to me as the right man, I accepted him on good faith as the right man. Was I wrong?

Mr. Buttle - whose fault is it that this is the wrong man? The paperwork said it was Buttle.

That wrong man was poor Archibald Buttle (Brian Miller) who later died after being taken away in a case of mistaken identity – in that, they have the wrong name entirely and are looking for Archibald “Harry” Tuttle (Robert DeNiro). Jill Leighton (Kim Greist) attempts to find out what happened to her neighbor Mr. Buttle but since he’s considered a criminal, she’s only met with institutional indifference, given the ol’ run-around.

Sam, however, is in the system. So surely he can fight it – that’s where we think the film is going. Someone who is of the system but doesn’t really care for it will use his knowledge of the system against it to take it down and make the world a better place.

Will Sam take down the system? If this was a simple film subject to studio tinkering, then yes. If it’s a complex film about our real contemporary world, then no.

Gilliam, however, isn’t one for the Hollywood convention of a happy ending (as is thoroughly documented in his fight with Universal Studios and Sid Sheinberg to get Brazil released back in 1985). Instead, Sam, who has apparent privilege as a worker drone in the Ministry of Information and as the son of a prominent member of the government, in the end can’t defeat the system nor can he prevent himself from being a victim of it either.

One of our QFS group members brought up this phrase that I’ll try to remember when talking about Brazil in the future – it’s Kafka meets Capra. Comparisons to George Orwell and his 1984 are of course impossible to miss, but it’s not entirely accurate. The seminal book paints a bleak and ultimately joyless world living under a totalitarian state. Brazil’s world isn’t quite as bleak – in fact, the rich among them are very happy. They can endure routine terrorist attacks as “poor sportsmanship” and can continue to eat brunch so long as a barrier blocks them off from the horrors unfolding behind them. Or they can completely change their appearance with the right cosmetic surgeon. And Sam’s inner mind is full of fantasy and light - he’s actually fighting the system in his dreams, as opposed to being swallowed by it in reality.

Winged hero Sam Lowry, in flight during a dream.

Although the less wealthy and poor are victims of an uncaring world – the Buttles, for instance – Gilliam plays all of this for absurdist laughs as opposed to bleak sadness. The film is satire, not a post-apocalyptic look back at a world lost as we inhabit a brave new world. Gilliam has said that Brazil does not take place in the future and even the title card says “somewhere in the 20th Century” (which now of course puts this film firmly in the past). So it’s about our present day where consumerism is most important, a world where a child asks Santa for a credit card, a procession marches by with people holding up “Consumers for Christ” banners, and the guard implores Sam to confess quickly otherwise his credit score will suffer. Twentieth century “satire” here comes dangerously close to full on 21st Century reality.

Consumers For Christ banner parades through the city.

And, I dare say, the film does find a way to have something resembling hope. Well maybe not as far as hope, but one can interpret that, in the end, Sam has found a place unreachable by the overbearing State – his innermost mind. The ending – the very ending, not what appears to be ending with Sam being rescued by the very terrorists he’s accused of being a part of – but the final moment of Sam in the chair humming the tune that’s the film’s namesake. He has gone off into the sunset with a woman he loves, free from paperwork and the dirty city.

Perhaps this is a happy ending? Sam smiling, lost in a fantasy for good.

Or, maybe they’ve already performed the lobotomy and it’s as bleak as saying – whatever you do, the State wins in the end (as does Big Brother in Orwell’s work). It’s unclear here in Brazil, but what’s clear is that the filmmaker shows a man in a chair surrounded by darkness, only to have that darkness dissolve into clouds and the world of his dreams. To me and to several of us in the discussion group, that is a glimmer of something brighter from the outside world.

Sam enters Information Retreival.

Much has been written about the groundbreaking production design and imagery in the film and what’s striking about seeing it now, in the 21st Century, is that this film was made at all. In our current movie landscape, only a two or maybe three directors are able to create an entire world something as big, bold and maniacal as this – perhaps only Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and maybe Denis Villeneuve – without relying upon pre-existing source material. “I.P.” to use the language or our times. And Brazil is a lot for a first-time viewer, we discovered – it’s full of visual gags and stimulation, extraordinary camera work, clever dialogue with that Monty Python-esque British humor inflected throughout. You could watch the film all the way through just for the propaganda signs throughout (“Suspicion breeds confidence.”) And it’s just a utter stroke of genius that this whole thing is set off by a bug falling into the printing machine. A system so confident in its infallibility but yet the tiniest of creatures can cause it to fail.

This set is both excellent in its design but also photographed nearly perfectly by Terry Gilliam and cinematographer Roger Pratt with one of the all time great camera dolly movies.

Brazil is full of big ideas packed into a madhouse of a film. If there’s one thing we’re missing, one sadness at revisiting a work as innovative and inventive as Brazil, is that there are so few of its kind since then. So few original films on that scale that are about ideas. Perhaps Nolan is the only one making inventive big world creation films about ideas. There’s a bleak homogenization in our movies, one big action or comic-book based film looking almost exactly like the next. It’s our version of being surrounded by gray walls.

Are we living in Gilliam’s Brazil or some version of that now? I don’t think it’s as bleak as all that. After all, we’ve all but gotten rid of paperwork.

Paperwork reigns down after Sam disrupts the tube system in Information Retrieval.

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

QFS No. 156 - The invitation for October 30, 2024
Shaun of the Dead is directed by Edgar Wright, wacky genius behind one of my favorite Quarantine Film Society selections Hot Fuzz (2009, QFS No. 29), selected in our group’s first year.

And since my involvement with zombies and zombie fare as a filmmaker has been long documented, Shaun the Dead seemed like an appropriate pick to discuss on the eve of Halloween. If this movie is even remotely as funny as Hot Fuzz, it’s going to be a very satisfying viewing experience.  

So for now let’s ignore our current apocalypse and watch Shaun of the Dead (one of the great plays on “of the dead” you can find) and discuss.

Shaun of the Dead (2004) Directed by Edgar Wright

Reactions and Analyses:
For a comedy about zombies and a zombie apocalypse, Shaun of the Dead (2004) actually has something very pointed to say about humanity – especially at the beginning and the end of the film.

That commentary begins in the opening credits which roll after the opening teaser sequence where we meet Shaun (Simon Pegg) and all the main characters. During the opening credits, director Edgar Wright shows humans sleep-walking through life, zombie like. They sway in unison with their music devices, drugged out, waiting for the bus with vacant expressions and checking their watches simultaneously. Or they go through the motions as cashiers or in the supermarket parking lot. Even Shaun, when he wakes up, lurches like the undead.

Zombies or people? Or can we even tell the difference?

In Shaun of the Dead (2004), Edgar Wright asks the question if we’d even notice a zombie apocalypse at all.

The filmmaker appears to be saying – we’re already acting like zombies. So if an actual zombie apocalypse happens, would we even notice?

The answer, for a while, is no. At least not for Shaun and Ed (Nick Frost) – roommates and disconnected from the world and occupied by their own concerns. (Or lack of them, in Ed’s case.) Meanwhile, a strange disease or occurrence is turning people into the undead. The fact is, we are so distracted and going through the motions of life that we can easily avoid knowing that an apocalypse is at our doorstep.

Shaun, moving zombie-like through the world already.

Wright cleverly continues to show us that we’re already among people who are the walking dead already. A homeless beggar asks Shaun for cash and later, when that beggar has been turned into a zombie, Shaun barely notices the difference. In another scene, Shaun looks out at the park and sees what appears to be a homeless person with mental health issues who goes after pigeons. Is he about to eat one? Before we can find out, a bus comes between Shaun and the man, and both the pigeons and the – homeless person? zombie? – are gone.

Shaun even stares, zombie-like, at the television, a television set that is desperately trying to tell him that the world is crumbling and people need to take cover because humans are mutating into some sort of animal-like undead creature. It’s an incredibly brilliant device – Shaun is flipping through the channels and each one is filling out a statement, telling us (who already know this) and Shaun (who still isn’t hearing it) that the world is ending. It’s terrifically funny and a perfectly clever coordination of exposition, character development, and plot setup.

Even when one of the undead women nearly kills Shaun, they think she’s drunk and coming on to him. It isn’t until they see her impaled and survive with a hole in her torso do they finally understand that something is very very very wrong. It’s fantastic.

Shaun still doesn’t quite get that there are zombies now in the world, even when one is literally on top of him.

He finally finally gets it.

As several us in the discussion pointed out, Wright and his collaborator Pegg are clearly fans of genres. We screened and discussed Hot Fuzz (2009, QFS No. 29) four years ago, a film that’s a perfect homage and satire of action films that could only be done by someone deeply immersed in the genre. Same goes for Shaun of the Dead – it’s clear that Wright and Pegg are zombie movie nerds. The film contains a multitude of reference and possibly my favorite one is Shaun’s mother, named “Barbara” (Penelope Wilton) which gives the perfect set up to reference a line from Night of the Living Dead (1968, QFS No. 44) – “we’re coming to get you, Barbara!” Not to mention that they can’t say the “zed word,” a reference to the fact that zombie movies and shows go to painstaking lengths to call the undead anything but “zombies.” Even the Hindi-language broadcast in the Indian-run corner convenience store is broadcasting about the zombie apocalypse - but in Hindi so Shaun doesn’t get the news.

This tactic of smearing zombie guts on your body to move among the zombies will be used later in The Walking Dead series. 

The flowers for Shaun’s mother Barbara are an example of a simple gag set up and paid off much later.

Wright’s comedic setup, timing and use of dialogue are unmatched in contemporary filmmaking, I feel. His comedy isn’t based on improv or relies on clever characters the way a Judd Apatow film might, but uses visuals and filmmaking in the way that Charlie Chaplain may have done to enhance comedic scenarios. It’s true directing to enhance a story. And for Shaun of the Dead, it’s his clever use of satire to make a sideways dig at humanity that elevates this film from something like Zombieland (2009) that’s a funny action zombie-genre film but nothing much beyond that. Shaun of the Dead is an insightful film about our current civilization – still “current” even though it was made 20 years ago. I’d argue it's even more relevant now, frankly. He’s saying – we’re already in a semi-catatonic state of detachment. How much different are we than the zombies of movie lore?

Watching useful zombies on television in the aftermath.

And what cements his apparent commentary is the film’s denouement, the final moments after the climactic finale. Humanity has now learned to live with the undead around them. Shaun and Liz (Kate Ashfield) watch TV and see that there are the mundane type of shows we have now – talk shows, game shows, news documentaries – but with one key difference. They all have folded zombie-life into their world. Zombies have been utilized to do daily labor tasks humans once did. Others are part of a game show where they’re raced or used for sport. There’s a sensationalized talk show where a woman talks about the love of her life is a zombie. It’s so perfect – humanity hasn’t so much as learned from their mistakes and made life more vibrant, they’ve just adapted to the reality of having zombies living among them.

The clincher for this is the final scene – Ed, now a zombie, is chained in a little shed in Shaun and Liz’s yard, where he’s hooked up to a video game system. Just as we saw him at the beginning of the film. And Shaun plays with him. Ed is living the same life as before. Just now, as a zombie. Which is basically what he was all along.

Shaun and Ed, living on the couch in front of a video game console.

As Ed was in the beginning - on the couch, playing video games with his friend  Shaun.

Is this a scathing criticism of people, society, of men in particular? After all, Shaun’s journey throughout the film is evolving from an overgrown child into a man who can take charge and actually prove his love to Liz. Regardless, the commentary or criticism would be nothing without humor, the performances, and the execution from the deft hand of an elite-level filmmaker.  

Superbad (2007)

QFS No. 144 - The invitation for June 12, 2024
Last week we selected a somewhat abstract narrative art film from Southeast Asia. It only stands to reason that our next film should be a raunchy teen comedy, the likes of which are churned out regularly by Hollywood. I give you… Superbad.

I have, oddly, not seen Superbad. There is no reason for this other than perhaps I thought it was too silly to bother back then. But more likely, I was no longer the target audience when it came out seventeen years ago. Still, since it’s endured, I’ve wanted to see it. In part because the cast is superb – Jonah Hill (before he was slim and serious), Bill Hader (before he was a formidable auteur), Emma Stone (before she won two Oscars!) Seth Rogan (basically the same) and Michael Cera (also basically the same somehow).

Superbad feels like it has remained a worthy modern stupid comedy all these years later. Stupid comedies are the lifeblood of the industry – just look at Animal House (1978), to pick one school-related stupid comedy as an example. That has endured and is still referenced by at least a subset of the American public (men 45-75 years old). And with summer now starting, won’t it be something nice just to turn off the old noggin and watch a couple of nerdy teenagers just trying to do (super) bad things? I think so.

Anyway, join us to discuss Superbad!

Superbad (2007) Directed by Greg Mottola

Reactions and Analyses:
Is it possible that a film which includes a very long tangent about a 4th grader with an uncontrollable compulsion to doodle penis drawings can also be a film that has deep meaning about relationships, outward appearances, and observations about American society?

Yes. Somehow Superbad (2007) pulls this off.

Beneath all the vulgarity, the obsession with pornography, the underaged drinking, the cops behaving like children and the chaos throughout, Superbad has heart – just as the main characters Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Sera) do. In another era, Superbad (2007) would simply be a tale of high schoolers who set out to find booze for a party and comedy ensues and nothing more. (I dare you to find broader meaning Animal House, 1978). And on its surface, Superbad is that. But without too much digging, you can readily find some deeper themes and meaning.

Of course, the central love story in the film is between Seth and Evan. And in that story, we see one of the filmmakers’ themes that are a little less overt than the obvious – American males are incapable to expressing true emotion with each other unless their guards are down. The two high school best friends are going to miss each other next year and the film winds its way to show that they are undergoing separation anxiety.

Superbad is, among other things, a love story between Evan (Michael Cera) and Seth (Jonah Hill).

But we were interested as a group about why they are incapable of just coming out and saying that they’re going to miss each other. And I contend that the filmmakers are making a case about masculinity, that American males are unable to be emotionally open with another male. Alcohol, with its ability to release inhibitions, acts as the only facilitator for these kids (and adults) to actually talk to each other about how they’re feeling. The only way American men can be true with each other is with help, and that “help” is usually booze.

Finally, after about two-thirds of the way through the film, Seth and Evan have an extended argument and it comes out that Seth feels betrayed by Evan for enrolling in Dartmouth – even simply applying – because Seth isn’t going there for college and could never have gotten in anyway. It isn’t until a later scene when they’re both exhausted, drunk, and in sleeping bags next to each other that they can finally say that they love each other, and that they’ll miss each other.

So the movie is a breakup film and almost a romantic comedy about a platonic relationship between two young men. And the final way they can actually confess their love is when the illusion they present to the world has dissolved.

Finally, Seth reveals he’s upset with Evan and feels he’s being abandoned.

Later, when they’re both exhausted and have their guards down, they’re able to say they love each other.

And here is the second major theme – public persona and perception versus reality. Both Evan and Seth want to portray themselves as something they’re not. They want to show that they know how to party, that they can provide alcohol for everyone, and are part of the “in” crowd (even though no one can remember having seen them at a party before). They believe that sex is the most important thing in the world, and that having sex and being able to be good as sex is so vital before college. Illusions are a major part of Superbad.

The filmmakers here are also making a comment on American society as well. Seth and Evan are led to believe that the world will not accept them as who they are, therefore they have to pretend they are something else. Evan tries to show off for Becca (Martha MacIssac) by exaggerating their previous night’s adventures – which in reality were watching porn, shot-gunning beer, trying to get into a strip club – and tries to act “cool” but of course he’s incapable of it. Seth brags to Jules (Emma Stone) about being able to get alcohol but he needs Fogell/McLovin’ (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) and his ridiculous fake ID card - of course that fails. This illusion drives the two guys, that their ticket into the elites is providing alcohol and acting more important than you are.

Evan brags to Becca (Martha MacIsaac) about how much the guys party together.

But the night actually entails watching porn.

And drinking beer in a basement, followed by not getting into a strip club.

And here’s where the filmmakers are overt about their solution to this problem: be yourself. Seth eventually “wins over” (unclear, but at least as a friend) Jules and not because he got booze for the party like she asked. She doesn’t even drink alcohol. But she’s charmed by him – she saw his open vulnerable side when she caught him crying the previous night – and will even hang out with him at the mall the day after the party, even though he accidentally headbutted her and gave her a black eye the night before.

In that same scene, Evan reconnects with a hungover Becca. The night before she attempted to have sex with Evan but he objects to doing it while she’s drunk (even though Seth earlier in the film said “we can be that mistake!”) because she’ll regret it and won’t even remember. But it’s this act of earnestness that makes her realize he’s special and they go on an impromptu date at the mall to buy new comforters. He was his true self, not trying to put on a metaphoric mask in order to get laid before college because that’s what they were led to believe they needed to do.

Both of them act like themselves for the first time and are rewarded. Of course, this means that Seth and Evan have to awkwardly say goodbye to each other – still incapable of true emotion in public with each other – and they don’t know either to hug or to handshake. It’s a perfect moment. And here the filmmakers use perhaps the most artistic and cinematic sequence of shots in the film – the escalator, and the teeth on the steps separate the two platonic lovers as they go off their divergent paths , cleaving the two. It’s a perfect scene and ending of the film.

Seth looks back up at Evan from the escalator.

And Evan keeps his gaze on Seth, the two platonic lovers separated.

Further commentary about masculinity? Officer Slater (Bill Hader) and Officer Michales (Seth Rogan) and McLovin’s storyline. The cops are given the authority of a badge, and are given a license to behave like adolescent men. They can drink beers at a bar for free, raid parties, ignore responsibility, trash a police car and fire a gun in public at a stop sign with impunity. They’re living an adolescent dream, two men who were unable to be themselves when younger but now look who’s in charge? The kids you picked on are now the boss. Even all the penis drawings probably speak to this obsession with sex and masculinity that’s more about just a cavalcade of ludicrous penis drawings in what’s an otherwise seemingly superfluous tangent.

Setting aside all the actual commentary embedded in the film, Superbad is still, at its core, a comedy. Humor is subjective, and not everyone in the QFS group was taken by the antics depicted. But for me, the film made me laugh and I cringed whenever I had to witness the protagonists’ public awkwardness. In part because I didn’t want these two to look like idiots because I cared about them. (That cringe-inducing behavior was too much for some in the group.) I wanted Evan and Seth to succeed in bringing booze to minors at a party. Not because I felt like this was a great idea, but because I felt I knew an Evan and a Seth in high school. Cera and Hill’s performances are so excellent and spot on for the characters. The uncomfortable-in-my-own-skin feeling that Cera is able to bring in all of his performances work so excellently here.

Hill’s Seth, however, was more polarizing. While several in the group found him irredeemably off-putting, I had sympathy for him. He’s just a foul-mouthed, witty, overweight, awkward kid. And the reason I rooted for him can be found in an early scene. Seth and Evan walk out of a convenient store near the high school and Seth gets spit on Jesse (Scott Gerbacia), a bully who taunts him for no particular reason. That scene illustrated for me at least that Seth isn’t a kid who is all he claims to be, that he’s actually very low in that society and despises he’s at that level. I most craved for both to just be themselves because they were really funny and had a sweetness to them when they were just with each other and not putting on a social performance.

In Eight Grade (2018, QFS No. 19), Kayla (Elsie Fisher) tries to be something she’s not, as we watch her final week of eighth grade.

And the kids in Superbad all are attempting to be something they’re not, as we watch in their final few weeks of high school. (Obligatory shot of the famous McLovin’ fake ID.)

Several in the group were reminded of Eight Grade (2018, QFS No. 19), and there are a lot of parallels. Both take place at the end of the school year with a seismic life shift – Eight Grade of course is the end of middle school and Superbad is the end of high school into college. And while the humor in Eight Grade is rooted in a realism and Superbad is more on the screwball-comedy end of the spectrum, both feature sets of protagonists that are attempting to be something they are not, to project an image of importance or popularity. And both films root the stories in characters who seem realistic and familiar, because the emotions are true. Both films offer broader commentaries on American society, but in Superbad those commentaries are masked by the raunchy comedy the smothers the film. If you see past that (and past the avalanche of penis drawings), just as if you see past the illusion presented by Seth and Even, you can find that the film and the characters have something to say.

The Philadelphia Story (1940)

QFS No. 142 - The invitation for May 29, 2024
Time to curl up with a classic Hollywood movie. And The Philadelphia Story is about as classic as it comes. Jimmy Stewart? Check. Cary Grant?! Check. Katherine Hepburn?!? Check. The great George Cukor at the helm?!?! Check and mate.

I have never seen this film, which is a strange blind spot. The Philadelphia Story frequently comes up as one of the films of the era that has endured the test of time so I don’t have any explanation as to how I missed this in my viewing history.

George Cukor – you might recall from the QFS email about Gaslight (1944, QFS No. 106) that you likely have printed out and framed like you do with all of these – is one of the great workhorse elite Hollywood filmmakers of the day, eventually winning an Academy Award for 1964’s My Fair Lady. So you know it’s going to be a solid film even if you hadn’t already knew about it.

 So join me in seeing the iconic performers in the classic The Philadelphia Story and then join us in discussing it!

The Philadelphia Story (1940) Directed by George Cukor

Reactions and Analyses:
Do you need much of a plot if you have legendary actors and great dialogue? That question, or some version of that, dominated our discussion about The Philadelphia Story (1940). Comedy sometimes cannot transcend eras, but The Philadelphia Story is one of those films that continues to endure.

And why? This is not a cynical or facetious question – but what is it in a comedy that is funny more than 80 years ago that remains funny today? Physical comedy and slapstick can last beyond the time in which it was created – our December screening of the Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera (1935, QFS No. 132) illustrated that for us. But George Cukor’s comedy has really none of that physical comedy. And yet, throughout the film the dialogue and the performances are genuinely funny.

What do we hope happens in this story? That’s one of the main questions we had about The Philadelphia Story (1940).

At the same time, the plot of The Philadelphia Story is an afterthought. That’s not to say it’s devoid of one – it’s nominally about a wealthy bride (Katharine Hepburn as Tracy Samantha Lord) on her wedding weekend with the wedding coming up. So we have a timeframe, a clicking clock. Throw in a plot to infiltrate this high society with a “secret” photographer (Ruth Hussey as Liz Imbrie) and journalist (Jimmy Stewart as Mike Connor) writing a story for a gossip magazine – all facilitated by the woman’s ex-husband C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant).

But then, what is still the central tension? Is it this question who will Tracy marry? Or is it will Mike and Liz be found out as spies for Spy magazine? The latter gets dispelled rather quickly, so that’s not it. The former – well, that’s not really posed as a question until far later, when it’s clear that Tracy and Mike have some kind of a connection.

And the resolution – that her fiancé George (John Howard), unsure of Tracy’s moral rectitude, decides to leave her, Katharine returns to Dexter and gets “remarried” to him with the guests who should have been there when she first married him years ago.

Just writing all of that made my head spin. And so - is this why this is the quintessential screwball comedy?

One aspect of the film that people have rightly observed over the decades is class, and that came up in our discussion as well. A QFS member very astutely pointed out that this film is ultimately a very cynical take on class. George, the fiancé, has pulled himself up by his bootstraps from middle class (or poverty) into high society with Tracy and her family. But he is derided throughout the film from the start, with subtle jabs at his upbringing.

Take for example a simple scene early on, as pointed out by one of our members. George is at the stables with Tracy and the rest of her family. He is the only one who has trouble mounting a horse – presumably, he didn’t grow up with them on his estate – and everyone sort of laughs at him, even Uncle Willie (played with unnerving creepiness by Roland Young) rolls his eyes and says, “Hi ho, Silver” derisively.

George has difficulty mounting a horse, presumably because he didn’t spend his youth riding them.

Mike also is an outsider and appears to maybe connect with Tracy but in the end returns to a women more in line with in his class category.

Meanwhile, Dexter is still beloved by everyone except his ex-wife Tracy. Her sister, Dinah (Virginia Weidler) openly wishes he came to the wedding and when he does arrive at the house her mother (Mary Nash) can’t keep her hands off of him. This is a man, mind you, the very first scene of the movie we see of him shoving Tracy down physically with a palm to the face! But he’s forgiven by most and perhaps it’s because of a reason unsaid: he’s a member of the class and belongs with his kind.

Watching Jimmy Stewart (Mike) and Katharine Hepburn (Tracy) stone cold drunk is, if nothing else, reason enough to see The Philadelphia Story (1940).

Then comes Mike, played with Stewart’s uncanny everyman persona. He connects with Tracy and she finds depth in his writing and they are drunk and fall in lust or love or something. But even he – he of the working class – when it’s time at the end of the movie and he hastily proposes to Tracy, she rebuffs him.

The film seems to be saying – it’s all well and good to mingle between classes on some drunken weekend. But that’s all for fun because when it comes down to it you’ll get hitched to the one who is of your own kind.

This is a pretty stark take but it’s all there in the film. There seems no good reason to me, at least (and most of us) for Tracy to end up back with Dexter. Is it that Dexter has sobered up and has changed and she sees that? If that’s the case, it’s barely in the film’s narrative at all. Is it that Dexter now sees Tracy as not a goddess but as a human? That doesn’t come out either. If anything, Mike is closest to saying that Tracy has humanity and depth but even he treats her as if she’s this luminescent creature.

In the end, perhaps all of this ultimately doesn’t matter. Perhaps a loose plot is the maximum you need when you have legendary performers behaving badly. Jimmy Stewart is a downright fantastic alcoholic in this film, and Katharine Hepburn is no slouch either. You could do worse than watching ninety minutes straight of these two getting supremely sloshed and hamming it up on screen.

And perhaps, ultimately, that’s why this film has endured, what so many filmmakers today find this film unassailable as a romantic comedy. Maybe that’s all that matters in making a classic – a fun, slightly superficial, dastardly romp with the wealthy behaving in ways we imagine the wealthy to behave behind closed doors. Which is the exact assignment Mike and Liz were given in the first place. We, the audience, are the ones who actually get to see that story play out on screen in front of us.

The Holdovers (2023)

QFS No. 133 - The invitation for February 21, 2024
This is our first selection of an Alexander Payne film, one of my favorite contemporary filmmakers. I’ve seen nearly all of his movies, hence its exclusion from the QFS Priority Selection List since I’ve seen nearly all of them. Truly one of the great living screenwriters, a modern auteur.

The first Payne film I saw was Election (1999) at an advance screening in Ann Arbor* while I was in my first screenwriting class. Our professor took us to see it at the State Theater and the film didn’t even have the final credit scroll yet. I saw it a second time at the Michigan Theater during its regular release later that year and it remains one of my favorite viewing experiences – the film brought the house down, especially after one line in particular. Exemplary satire, Election is an underrated modern classic and should have earned Reese Witherspoon at least an Oscar nomination, one of a litany of Oscar Crimes™ over the years (see 2023: Gerwig, Greta).

Payne’s Sideways (2004) not only won him his first Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay but also single-handedly made Santa Barbara Wine Country overcrowded, drove up the demand for pinot noir production and consumption and destroyed the reputation of the perfectly fine merlot grape. His Nebraska (2015) is a beautiful, melancholic road trip film. Throw in About Schmidt (2002), and The Descendants (2011) for which he won another writing Oscar, and you could call that a pretty terrific career.

I’m sure I’m not the first one to suggest this, but from the way I see it Payne is the Preston Sturges of our times. Sturges, as you recall from QFS No. 2 The Miracle at Morgan Creek (1944), wrote and directed films about ordinary misfits caught in a lie or a deception – as a fake husband in The Miracle at Morgan Creek, Hail the Conquering Hero (1944) as a fake war hero or Sullivan’s Travels (1941) as a filmmaker posing as a fake hobo – as a way into the exploration of humanity, relationships and society. Both have a similar way of capturing a character’s story through humor, often bittersweet, but with the slightest of social commentary. With Sturges that commentary was a little more overt and daring, and Payne’s mission is not cultural or social criticism necessarily. But you can find it in his authentic portrayal of an ordinary person, his or her sense of normalcy upended.

Sturges might’ve used more sweet than bitter in his cinematic concoctions, and Payne can be acerbic and creates some truly uncomfortable and squirm-inducing scenes. So it’s not a perfect comparison but I stand by the assertion. Regardless, both carved out a particular niche in their eras – auteurs whose works relied upon well-told stories with grounded characters in exquisitely crafted scripts as opposed to artistic or visual innovation. With health doses of humor.

I’m very much looking forward to finally seeing another Alexander Payne film, his first in six years, and having a chance to discuss it with you. Please watch The Holdovers at home or in the theater – still playing somewhere near you I believe – and we’ll discuss!

*Home of the current National Champions of College Football.

The Holdovers (2023) Directed by Alexander Payne

Reactions and Analyses:
There’s a moment in The Holdovers (2023) that feels like its heading towards familiar territory. A misunderstood curmudgeon teacher and his misfit students all have to somehow survive the winter together at their private boarding school as they’re stuck with each other until school resumes after the break. With this setup, it’s easy to be prepared for a story in which the students come to understand this man more and the teacher softens and becomes a better person and therefore a better teacher by knowing his students more personally – and everyone learns something about themselves or life that prepares them for the world more than their conventional education ever could.

I’m not trying to sound glib; many an excellent film has done this well and movingly – Dead Poets Society (1989) or The Breakfast Club (1985) come to mind. So that’s the direction Alexander Payne is appearing to veer us towards in The Holdovers.

But then, something happens. All the kids, except for one literally fly away in a helicopter to a mountain top.

Paul (Paul Giamatti) and Angus (Dominic Sessa) are stuck with each other from this point forward in The Holdovers (2023).

What Payne really setting up for is this – don’t expect anything because this movie is not going where you think it is going.

As one of our group members put it, you think it’s going to be a movie about class, but it’s not just that; you think it’s going to be a movie a hardened grump falling in love and being transformed by that, but it’s not; you think it’s about the start of a friendship between a teacher and his student – it’s not that exactly either.

All of those themes are in The Holdovers, to be sure, but just when the narrative goes in the direction you think it’s going to go, it goes somewhere else. That this happened in a film that Alexander Payne directed but did not write – to me, that’s incredibly impressive. He took another script and made it a film that feels very much like his voice.

What Payne has always been good at is making characters feel real, even when they’re a little askew. His characters have believable inner lives, are imperfect, and struggle inwardly but not usually outwardly. What I’ve loved and appreciated about Payne’s movies is that they have a very distinct comedic edge but they’re truly dramas. I empathize with the characters in his movies because they seem so much like humans with familiar struggles. 

The Holdovers caused me to experience something new for me in a Payne film – it made me well up with tears several times. Angus (Dominic Sessa) meets his father (Stephen Thorne) in a mental institution, they hug and Angus tells him he misses him. His father, seemingly moved, can actually only reply that he believes the institution’s staff is poisoning his food. And then you realize that Angus is truly alone and in deep need of love and encouragement. When Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) breaks down at the party about the loss of her son, you feel it deeply, as if she’s been holding it at bay for so long and finally lets her grief go.

Topping off all them, however, is the end. The handshake between Angus and Paul (Paul Giamatti). There is perhaps more power, more earned emotion in that handshake than in any number of romance films or romantic comedies’ climactic kisses. And importantly, it’s not a hug – it would’ve been ruined if it was a hug. It would’ve felt fake, like a movie. Because that’s not their relationship. They’re still teacher and student. They went through a journey together, learned each other’s deepest held secrets, have changed and grown to see each other as lonely, suffering, resilient human beings. And that handshake holds it all, with Paul’s cracking voice and Angus hearing from his teacher – a sort of surrogate father role – that the kid is going to be all right. That’s all Angus needed in his journey, was someone to tell him that. And it was earned, narratively, and paid off in the right way.

Perhaps the most meaningful handshake in recent movie history. And then Angus is gone.

In the invitation to this week’s selection, I mentioned Payne as our era’s Preston Struges. And I think this film helps bolster that case. Let’s set aside how both auteurs deftly use comedy to tell a dramatic story in ways both narratively interesting but grounded in truth. There’s also the social criticisms embedded in their films.

Payne addresses class in The Holdovers in several ways but most importantly it’s woven into the DNA of the main character Paul. When we learn about his backstory, Paul reveals he was kicked out of Harvard because of allegations of plagiarism by the son of a famous person at Harvard – when it was actually the opposite, the son copied Paul’s work. But the administration wouldn’t have sided with a kid who left his abusive father and extricated himself from poverty and ended up at Harvard through his own means. The fact that he’s cut down by the wall of privilege is devastating in the retelling and is evident in the unresolved grief that Paul contains within.

Similarly, we hear about Mary’s late son who couldn’t get a scholarship to pay enough for college, went off to the army with the hopes of eventually going to college, only to have him die fighting in Vietnam. Mary’s story touches on race too – it’s never said but you know that he was the only Black kid in his class, whose mother worked there just so he could go to school and have a chance.

Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) in her sister’s simple room. She gives her son’s baby shoes and other baby clothes in a exquisitely moving scene. Even the set dressing and set here is a depiction of class - a Black middle class home set against the wealth privilege of Dalton from the rest of the film.

In all these ways, Payne is making an oblique criticism of the system that rewards the wealthy and well connected, but not through didactic speechifying, but through the story, through the setting, and through the characters. Simply pointing out it exists in the way it exists and portraying it in a way that shows it’s real and not a narrative contrivance is perhaps one of the best ways a filmmaker can illustrate how inequitable things truly are.

Sturges’ social criticisms of a different era centered around poverty and concepts of masculinity/military might. In Sullivan’s Travels (1945), Sullivan (Joel McCrea) a Hollywood director wants to make a movie about hobos. To do so, he goes and lives as one. But it’s skin deep – he can escape this any time so there’s no real lesson learned and he’s only doing this as a temporary means to an end. Through a series of circumstances, he ends up homeless and without memory and actually has to live as a vagrant. In both The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944, QFS No. 2) and Hail the Conquering Hero (1944), the main character has to pose as a military man or a masculine husband figure despite being just an ordinary guy who gets caught up in a… well not quite lies, but untruths let’s say.

(Above) Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels on the left (1944) and Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers on the right. Completely different storylines in these specific films, but both filmmakers auteurs wield comedy to tell dramatic stories with an embedded criticism of class. Auteurs of their times.

Sturges uses more narrative contrivances than Payne does but both point out some of the unfairness or absurdity of life through a lived experience of a character, through the use of humor and poignancy – with near perfect writing and performances. Again, it’s not a perfect comparison but both Payne and Sturges were auteurs who had something to say about our current world and about humanity that is revealing while simultaneously being entertaining.

Another member of the group put it this way – I thank the film gods that a movie like The Holdovers is still being made. Writing, directing, acting, an adult storyline and grown-up themes. This is the film that has become an endangered species in the era of limited series and the mid-budget character driven dramas ending up on screening services instead of movie screens. Thank the film gods indeed for giving us Dominic Sessa and Da’Vine Joy Randolph in these roles, and for seeing Paul Giamatti corner the market on the curmudgeon with the soft center. And thank the film gods for Alexander Payne continuing to use his formidable might to bring these stories to life.

A Night at the Opera (1935)

QFS No. 132 - The invitation for December 20, 2023
For our final 2023 selection, we’re going to a holiday classic!

Okay fine, so it’s not exactly a holiday classic, but doesn’t this time of year seem like a perfect opportunity to watch a Marx Brothers film? We haven’t yet selected a film by the comedy legends, and A Night at the Opera is widely known as one of their best films.

I know I’ve seen parts of many of their movies, but I believe I’ve only seen Duck Soup (1933) from start to finish. I have a feeling the redeeming artistic value of this movie might be minimal. But movies are a lot of things – and sometimes they’re just pure entertainment. Comedies are difficult and require so much technical skill, so it should be fun to take a closer look at how they pull of the perfect banana cream pie toss.

And with the holiday break and kids are off of school, this might be a fun one to watch with them for all the gags and mayhem and the answer to difficult trivia questions. For example – can you name all of the Marx Brothers? I got three out of five (answers below)*.

So join us for the final QFS of 2023. I’d love to do more before the calendar turns, but wouldn’t you know it? The strike ended and now there is finally directing work. It’s back to the TV mill for me, hence there will be some pauses coming up for the movie group.

Enjoy A Night at the Opera as we wrap up QFS for 2023!

*Chico, Harpo, Groucho, Gummo and Zeppo. I totally missed Chico and Gummo, in part because Gummo was not in any movies. I have no excuse for missing Chico.

A Night at the Opera (1935) Directed by Sam Wood

Reactions and Analyses:
Comedy doesn’t always transcend eras. Some can be very specific to the time in which it was created, with cultural references or styles of speaking that become outdated. The Marx Brothers are among those who have managed to create works of comedy that endures beyond their lifetimes.

True, in A Night at the Opera (1935), there are minor handful of contemporary jokes lost on modern audiences. But even in those – such as the one about “quintuplets up in Canada” – the content of the joke itself may not have lasted, but the delivery and Otis B. Driftwood (Groucho Marx)’s reaction and delivery of the line still gets a laugh: “Well, I wouldn't know about that; I haven't been in Canada in years.”

Any discussion about A Night of the Opera is going to center on the Marx Brothers, of course, because when you get down to it, that’s really primarily what the movie is – a launching point for their comedy. Much of our discussion was about the brothers and almost no talk about the plot or the filmmaking. Which is the point; it is, after all, a Marx Brothers movie.

The cabin-filling sequence in A Night at the Opera (1933) is peak Marx Brothers.

In addition to Groucho’s near-perfect, constant one-liner deliveries, the Marx Brothers are simply the greatest agents of chaos in movie history. Throw them into any situation, and that’s what you get – chaos. That’s the hallmark of a Marx Brothers movie. The difference, perhaps, in this film is with the inclusion of some musical numbers, the attempt at a love story, and only minor social commentary (as opposed to the more direct commentary in Duck Soup, 1933)

Several QFS members pointed out how one can see their influence on future comedians - Martin Short came to mind, the magic of Penn and Teller, and even Mel Brooks. Rodney Dangerfield is the clearest heir to Groucho Marx we could think of and the discovery of that delighted me immensely.

One QFSer felt less sanguine about the film, that it was repetitive and there wasn’t a story – as compared to a Charlie Chaplin film, for example. Chaplin’s films, though often featuring the same Tramp character, had a strong storyline, a social commentary, pathos, and of course groundbreaking visual comedy and sight gags. Marx Brothers movies, however, were merely a way to setup the Marx Brothers wreaking havoc in a straight world around them. Both are funny, both have endured, and both have stood the test of time. Where Chaplin used artistry to enhance his comedy, the Marx Brothers relied on their on-screen personas and vaudevillian skills to enhance theirs.

One way of thinking about this, to me, is there are movies that are funny (Chaplin’s Modern Times, 1936) and there are funny movies (A Night at the Opera). Movies that are funny are films with a compelling driving narrative that’s told in a funny and artful way. Funny movies are comedies that favor humor and gags above the plot and storyline. This is an utterly unsophisticated way of putting this, but a distinction between styles of films that make audiences laugh is worth considering. How do you make someone laugh? There’s no one way and the differences between how Chaplain does it and the Marx Brothers do it provide some insight into that. A deep dive into this comedy would be, of course, a lot of fun.

Generally speaking, the group agreed that though the plot was thin and perhaps unnecessary even, this is a film that you can probably just pick up at any point and simply enjoy the gags – the absurd amount of people in the cabin, the disappearing beds, the contract negotiation, the final opera, and so on. Perhaps a funny movie doesn’t need to be much more than that.

Planes, Trains and Automobies (1987)

QFS No. 129 - The invitation for November 22, 2023
John Hughes is one of my all-time favorite filmmakers and, I dare say, one of the reasons I wanted to become one myself. The only reason we haven’t selected one of his movies yet is that I have seen basically all of them – especially the ones he directed. There are a few he wrote that I haven’t yet seen, but truly it’s hard to remember a time when I hadn’t seen a John Hughes film.

While he wrote and produced a ton, he only directed eight movies.** Most of those eight have withstood the test of time and to talk about Hughes is to talk in superlatives. There might be no better movie about ditching school and having a dream day than Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) – easily one of my favorite films of all time, one that takes on a mythic status for kids who grew up near the city of Chicago. The Breakfast Club (1985) is class struggle as told through high school and has never been topped. Sixteen Candles (1984) is a defining movie of the 1980s coming-of-age subgenre and Weird Science (1985) is a true teen boy’s dream film. Uncle Buck (1989), though perhaps on the second tier of his work, is one of the great John Candy performances of all time – topped only by this week’s selection.

And that’s only his directing work. He produced a ton of films and also wrote ones he didn’t direct, including National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983) – probably the most quoted road-trip movie of all time – and Home Alone (1990), which exploded across the screens when it came out and remains arguably one of the greatest Christmas films ever made.

Which brings me to this week’s selection. Planes, Trains and Automobiles is one of those films that, when you came across it on television back when we used to channel surf, you had to just sit down and watch it. It sucks you in. A prefect odd couple road trip movie, set just before Thanksgiving with two men trying to get to Chicago in time for the family dinner. Steve Martin as his strait-laced uncomfortable best; John Candy in a performance has depth and heart that undergirds the sweet annoying comedic veneer. Consider that this and Midnight Run (1988, QFS No. 64) came out within one year of each other – two classic odd couple road trip films that are up there with some of the great comedies of all time. Well, that’s pretty terrific.

John Hughes was great at setting up a finish line, a destination or an event that the film was building up towards. In Ferris Bueller’s Day Off it’s the end of the school day. In Some Kind of Wonderful (1985) directed by Howie Deutch, it’s the prom. In Vacation, it’s getting to Wally World. Here, it’s Thanksgiving, just over the horizon, Chicago as the film’s Oz. Hughes was a master of mainstream storytelling, but with depth and heart. He just knew how to make his comedies feel somehow meaningful in a bigger way but simple and grounded. I once worked with Howie Deutch, one of his long-time partners, so I have a few fun stories I remember that I’ll try to share in the film chat.

So watch (or rewatch for the 523rd time) Planes, Trains and Automobiles and join us to chat about it. I have two extra tickets to go see it at the New Beverly on Tuesday, so hit me up if you want one. This is going to be a great one to see with a crowd.

It’ll be our last group chat for a couple weeks, so I hope you’ll be able to join on Thanksgiving Eve and discuss what we’re grateful for – which hopefully includes the work of John Hughes. See you then!

*Low bar, I know. I can’t think of an actual “Thanksgiving movie” but this one comes close, even though I’d call it a buddy picture-road trip movie more than a Thanksgiving movie. Scent of a Woman (1992) could arguably make the same claim, but that too is a sort of road trip movie over Thanksgiving weekend. 

**This surprised me, given his outsized influence on the 1980s in general and my childhood in particular.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) Directed by John Hughes

Reactions and Analyses:
I have seen Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) so many times it’s virtually impossible to remember a time when I didn’t know every word of the film. Not only because I love the movie, but also I grew up in a time when it would rerun on television quite a bit, and when it did I was powerless but to sit down and watch it. But I had never seen it in the theater before – I would’ve been a tad too young in 1987 to see this one when it came out – so when it appeared on the New Beverly calendar during Thanksgiving week, I had to take the chance to see it. And since we hadn’t selected any of John Hughes’ work for QFS, an opportunity for an in-person viewing for an online discussion was one we couldn’t pass up.

At its core, Planes, Trains and Automobiles is a story about class. Hughes says it himself in this terrific oral history of the making of the film published by Vanity Fair November 2022:

I like taking dissimilar people, putting them together, and finding what’s common to us all. Part of the point is there are a privileged few who operate between New York and Los Angeles or London and Paris. But if something screws up and they get off the exclusive track, it’s someone like Del Griffith who knows how to get them home. What kept the movie going was the opposites—two dissimilar guys. If it weren’t for a storm, someone like Neal Page would never meet a guy like Del.

We see this in so many of his films, most notably The Breakfast Club (1985), where students from different social classes are forced to meet and work together. It struck us in the group that there is no current filmmaker filling this role as it pertains to class divisions, at least no one that comes to mind. And definitely no one doing it as authentically as Hughes – perhaps Harold Ramis and John Landis come close. Frank Capra is the one who probably came closest to Hughes forty years earlier. The Capra comparison is probably most apt, though I’d argue that Hughes seasons his happy endings with a little bittersweetness whereas Capra I’d say applies a little syrup.

And in many ways, Planes, Trains and Automobiles is entirely about class privilege. Neal (Steve Martin) can usually skate by with his wealth and status, but right away, his first indignity, is having to take a city bus to the airport. His next one is being denied his rightful place in first class on the airplane. Until his credit cards burn to a crisp in the car fire, Neal is able to rely completely without physical cash whereas Del Griffith (John Candy) has to count every coin and needs to use his wits (shower rings as earrings!) to scrape together additional cash. And it’s upon Del that Neal depends – he sees the benefit of kindness and being content with your true self. And Neal, too, by eventually coming around and seeing Del’s innate kindness, gets Del to finally admit that his wife is dead and he has no place to really go home to.

Neal and Del in Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) Directed by John Hughes

The beauty in this film (and perhaps all of Hughes’ work) is that no person is all one thing – Del is not all annoying; Neil isn’t just a jerk. They’re humans, with flaws, but with several dimensions to them (The Breakfast Club does this particularly well… but you can argue that Ferris in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, 1986, is the one Hughes character that’s less flawed than his other characters). And it’s through Hughes’ writing and casting that he’s able to make this happen. Few people humanize and cast “real” seeming people like Hughes can, and for a moment let’s set aside the obvious goofy charm of John Candy in this legendary performance. Look at all the other minor characters in the film – they’re all incredibly quirky but they feel fully real, fully human. Owen who takes them to Wichita (Dylan Baker), Edie McClurg as the rental car agent with probably the greatest button to a scene you can have, long-time character actor Larry Hankin as “Doobie” the cab driver, the hotel clerk (Martin Ferrero), Michael Mckean as the cop who pulls them over – all feel “real” or “real-ish.” Hughes’ world feels like our world because it’s populated by real people. Compare this with, say, the Farrelly Brothers or even the Coen Brothers who rely more upon caricatures and quirk than humanity.

There are so many memorable scenes that come to mind from Planes, Trains and Automobiles, aside from the profanity laden minute-long rant by Neal, which of course is legendary as the only reason the movie receives and “R” rating. The first time Neal talks with Del in the airport. When they’re on the plane together. The first Neal rant in the hotel is so eviscerating and bitterly hilarious that I had forgotten it happens so early in the film. The car burning down and then them driving it, and in particular the scene when they’re pulled over - which is a scene that still makes me laugh just thinking about it.

Watching this again, I argued that some of the 1980s cheesiness doesn’t hold up but much - the use of still frames and sappy music in particular. That didn’t bother the rest of the group. For me, this one scene in particular feels definitely of its time: when Neal verbally tears into Del at the hotel, Del is deeply hurt as he takes it in stride. Yet, he’s also self-aware of his personal flaws. At that moment, the music starts and, for my taste, this it’s a bit too much. John Candy is so good, so empathetic in his performance in that scene that for me, the music is unnecessary. Hughes uses it and would definitely be in line with the practices of a mainstream film of the 1980s. The ending montage of Neal piecing together that Del has been lying about his wife and home has a similar feeling of maybe being a touch out of date. Still, it is an effective way of being in Neal’s mind at that time. And the conclusion of the film, though satisfying, lays it on thick. Long live the ’80s!

That is to say, much of the film still retains an emotional gravity, especially given that it’s a comedy. When Neal later in the film is able to pay for a hotel room by bartering his fancy watch, Del can’t do the same (despite having a Casio) and is stuck sleeping in the burnt out car. Neal looks out the window - and again, he’s not just a jerk, he’s just wound up a little too tightly - Neal relents and asks Del to come inside and stay with him. It’s sweet and still pretty moving, given how many times I’ve seen the film.

A final note on my attachment to Hughes - he’ s a fellow Chicagoan. What this meant for me, growing up near Chicago when his movies came out, is that he captured a feeling of the city as a place that felt like the center of the world (with Ferris Buller’s Day Off being the prime example - they literally treat Chicago as their playground and hallowed escape from the drudgery of high school). The city was the center of my world, to be sure, and I was surprised when I got older and found out that Hughes’ movies set in and around Chicago was an outlier, not the norm.

From Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) Directed by John Hughes. I’m required by Chicagoan law to tell you that this skyline is fiction. There’s no view of the Chicago skyline like this off of that expressway in Chicago.

But being from the Midwest more broadly I think informs Hughes’ filmmaking as well. He writes about people that were familiar to him, about people he likely grew up around. It’s dangerous, of course, to generalize about a people of a paritcular region, but I always found that there are some common traits in the people I grew up with: unpretentious, generally kind, would bristle against injustice, and yes, you would run into someone like Del Griffith - chatty, no filter, unable to turn it off, generous to their core. And you’d also find people like Neal Page - prickly, uncomfortable in their own skin, but deep inside are reluctantly kind. Hughes captures these people in all their glory, throws them together, and creates true and earnest portrayals of humans in a way that we need to have return to big screens now and forever.

Beetlejuice (1988)

QFS No. 125 - The invitation for Ocboter 25, 2023
Well, it’s been 124 films in and we’re just now getting to see our first QFS selection of a Tim Burton film. I’m pretty surprised by that, but perhaps it’s because I’ve seen pretty much all of his films from his golden era of the mid 1980s until the 2000s. And then the 2000s hit and, well, the films start getting to be very much hit or miss.

Anyway, we’ll discuss Tim Burton’s legacy and work together so let’s save it for then! But let’s go back to the late 1980s when Beetlejuice comes out. Tim Burton comes out of Cal Arts as an artist with a through knowledge of the horror films from a generation before him. He hit the film scene with a terrific visual style and a unique take on the macabre, the unusual that’s on the fringe of horror and camp, between something that feels like a B-movie and something that feels like a big-budget whimsical fairytale. It’s hard to refute, but there are few directors of the last 40 years who have carved out a visual style so distinctive that their very name becomes shorthand for that style – “Burton-esque” if you will.

Burton’s first feature film was Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985) which is a very goofy film road-trip adventure with the eponymous main character who is somewhere between an adult and a child. Not that long after that, he’s hired to direct Batman (1989) – which is astonishing when you think about it. A major studio put a legendary comic book in the hands of Tim Burton, to be the first one to create the Batman movie franchise. It would be akin to Wes Anderson given the reigns to Star Wars.

Burton pulls it off and puts his indelible stamp on Batman, very much leaning into the comic book and not the campy 1960s TV show – but also not the nihilistic action films they become under Christopher Nolan 25 years later. Burton brings a comic book to life and focuses on the eccentric as he does in all his films. Note how this approach, however, failed years earlier with David Lynch at the helm of Dune (1984), in which Lynch focuses on the unusual and grotesque above the adventure and main plot. It’s amazing a studio was still willing to give someone like Burton a shot given how much of a disaster Dune was financially.

Continuing on with Burton – Edward Scissorhands (1990) is quintessential Burton in its art direction, its unusual main character and it’s off-kilter and melancholic feel. Ed Wood (1994), continues in that fashion. There are number of hits he has going forward that feel original – Big Fish (2003), Sleepy Hollow (1999) and his various stop-motion animated films.

But I feel Burton went awry when given the duty of remaking films. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) is a real doozy as is Planet of the Apes (2001) – a film so bad that they remade it a few years later as if this one hadn’t happened, consequently launching an entirely “new*” franchise on the backs of very mediocre films (which we call it in the industry with the technical term: “today’s Hollywood”). Alice in Wonderland (2010) is utterly dreadful and borderline embarrassing as is Dumbo (2019). I could go on about this but you get what I’m saying – Burton’s work is (or was) at its best when he was given freedom to create something original.

And in those films, you’ll see one major common element: off-balance main character anti-heroes. If Edward Scissorhands is quintessential Burton, then this week’s film is probably peak Burton in that regard. (Note I have not mentioned the name of this week’s film three times because I know what happens when you do.) What is the difference between “quintessential” and “peak,” you ask? Well, join us to discuss this, Beetlejuice and also the legacy of Tim Burton.

Beetlejuice (1988) Directed by Tim Burton

Reaction and Analyses
Perhaps the most innovative aspect of Beetlejuice is in its conception of the afterlife. With film’s ability to portray a physical realm with , verisimilitude what happens after you die has been a source of curiosity of filmmakers for more than a century. Constained only by one’s own imagination and influenced by religious traditions, previous artistic renderings of the afterlife, the post-death speculation has been rendered in the movies quite a bit, of course. Examples range from the painterly What Dreams May Come (1998) to the simple pulsating points of light of angels communicating from the stars in It’s A Wonderful Life (1947). There are courts for adjudication as in Defending Your Life (1991) or documentary testimonial interviews in the simple but terrific Afterlife (1998). There are so many more visions of the world of the dead - Coco (2017), Heaven Can Wait (1943 and 1978), Enter the Void (2009) - but these are a few that came to mind. And that doesn’t even touch upon the spirits of the dead walking among us with something left to do (Sixth Sense, 1999, or Ghost, 1990, for example).

Beetlejuice envisions a waiting room, akin to American DVM or any other bureaucratic institution, processesing and helping the recently (or not-so-recently) deceased continue into the afterlife. The afterlife waiting room scene is a pure stroke of Burton-esque genius. Every single character in that scene has a story about their life and their death just by seeing them. There is almost no explanation needed because the costumes of each dead person is so vividly portrayed. The magician’s assistant sawed in half, the office worker who’s been flattened by a car, and of course the hunter with the shrunken head and the tribesman - an entire story unto itself. These scenes are so genius and evoke the Star Wars (1977) cantina. Both are vibrant and bursting with the imagination of the filmmakers and tell stories all their own. (Also - this is the first time I caught that everyone working in the Beetlejuice waiting room all had committed suicide, now doomed to an eternity in civil service. Otho was right!)

The post-mortem processing center, as envisioned by director Tim Burton in Beetlejuice (1988). Those who committed suicide are condemned to work in the civil service - Burton’s trademark grim humor.

Most everyone (but, importantly, not everyone) in the QFS group had seen Beeltejuice but it had been some time. A few things stood out upon this rewatch and the first most obvious aspect is that the title character is barely on screen. He is on screen for 17 minutes. Seventeen! He’s teased and referred to quite a bit, of course, and appears in an “ad” on television, but in my memory of the film he has an outsized portion of screentime. That’s the kind of impact the character leaves on the memory, because when Michael Keaton comes on screen he just completely takes over, with that manic Jim Carrey-energy. He’s so obnoxious and simply lights the film on fire whenever he’s on screen. And man is Beetlejuice perverted. To distract him they have to create an afterlife brothel, which is pretty hilarious. That, in addition to glib jokes about suicide including Lydia (Winona Ryder) actively planning to do herself in - it struck me that this is definitely a film made in 1988 and not 2018.

The story at its core conceit is in part about the perils of making a pact with a gangster, a madman, a devil - and what the costs are. The costs here are that Lydia will be doomed to be stuck with a gross fellow. Yeah, that’s a sort of high price? The script, though textbook, has flaws that became apparent during viewing and discussion that I’ll get to below.

The opening shot of this film is excellent. What appears to be a helicopter or crane shot over the village, combined with Danny Elfman’s unforgettable score only to land on a wide shot of the (model) home. It’s not until the tarantula crests the roof and Adam (Alec Baldwin)’s hand reaches down to pick it up do you realize you’ve been seeing a model for the duration of that shot.

Opening shot of Beetlejuice (1988) is not a helicopter shot over a small town, it turns out.

Katherine O’Hara is so fantastic, especially when they’re possesed and singing “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” - boy that scene just comes out of nowhere and still is such goofy fun. The performances, everyone agreed, are overall solid but I personally felt that Winona Ryder was … not. Or was she just in a different movie? When Barbara (Geena Davis) and Adam are trying to scare off the family but they fail and Beetlejuice, when they first “hire” him, becomes a giant snake, Ryder’s Lydia screams “I hate you! I hate all of you!” and it’s just totally odd. But now I’m thinking that this is a flaw of screenwriting to some extent. She is playing the quintessential Burton misunderstood teen goth girl, but isn’t given enough rope or scenes to be truly surprised, develop a rapport, then to earn a feeling of betrayal at that moment. The film, though following a sort of textbook “Save the Cat” type of script, it felt that it was thin with a noticeable lag in the middle of the script. Also, when Barbara comes in riding a snake, they’re violating the mythology of the story. No where beforehand was the snake anything other than something preventing their escape from the home. Where did she get the idea to do this? And how? And how did that work so easily? The filmmakers blow past the logic there in order to tie it up with a bang. Also - no one really has a character arc.

And yet, it’s still a classic, unique story that still holds up - Beetlejuice’s perversity aside. In fact, several in the group agreed that the scene where Otho conjurs up Adam and Barbara in their wedding clothes and they steadily age and start to die as a particularly harrowing and moving scene. It’s one that stayed with me, and several of us, over the years.

Last point - it’s truly amazing to me is that someone at a studio saw Tim Burton’s work and said “yes, that’s the man who we want to direct Batman (1989)!” In similar fashion, George Lucas strongly considered David Lynch to direct Return of the Jedi (1983) - Lynch of coruse did go on to direct a (rightly) trashed Dune (1984). Regardless of the results, the very fact of this is really astonishing. Both are such visionaries but with such avant-garde or “quirky” filmmaking styles, making movies in the equivalent of a hand-painted VW van, were given the keys to drive a street-racing Ferrari. What a different time! Nowadays, if you make some really terrific independent film or two, you could be considered for a Marvel film or perhaps helm a spinoff for a big-budget streaming series. But to launch the Batman franchise and truly ignite an era of comic book film adaptations? Amazing. Instead of dwelling on that long-gone past where studio executives were willing to take high risks, I’m choosing to see that as inspiration for all of us working away here in Hollywoodland.

The Player (1992)

QFS No. 123 - The invitation for October 4, 2023
The Player will be our first selection from the works of master Robert Altman since way back in 2000 with one of our early QFS selections, McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971, QFS No. 11). Unlike the Western setting of that film, The Player storyline takes place and is set in Hollywood.

 I know the basic setting and concept only from people who have told me about the movie because … I have never seen this film. This admission is usually met with the following response: What – but you work in the film industry! Yes, dingbat, I know that and yes, you’re right, it’s borderline shameful I haven’t seen it. I have no excuse, though I have attempted but failed over the years to remedy this problem by finally seeing it, including at numerous local theatrical screenings that I’ve missed for one reason or another.

Which is why I’m excited to see this now and discuss with you! I’m also curious to know what 1990s Hollywood thought about working in 1990s Hollywood and what it’s like to be working in that same industry 33 years later. I remain a big fan of Mr. Altman’s filmmaking and this is a major gap in my knowledge of his work that will soon be addressed.

The Player (1992) Directed by Robert Altman

Reactions and Analyses:
As someone who works in the film business - as do most people in the QFS discussion group - I was struck how deeply cynical The Player (1992) is. I shouldn’t have been; the spirit of the film reflects what was almost certainly Robert Altman’s perception of the industry at this point in his career.

Altman comes to prominence in the 1970s with the great wave of American auteurs and finds critical acclaim for his films, especially Nashville (1975), MASH (1970), The Long Goodbye (1973) and McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971). These films all feature his voice as a filmmaker, with long fluid camera movement and at times a documentary-type approach to dialogue and interaction between the characters in the film.

But then, in 1980, he directs Popeye (1980) which utterly bombs in the box office. You could see the aftershocks int he 1980s - Altman has a long string of unremarkable films. Or at least films that have not endured the way his other films have. While other ’70s auteurs, like Martin Scorsese, Alan Pakula, Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma find their way with bigger budgets and films - not to mention George Lucas and Steven Spielberg - it’s Altman who is likely up against forces attempting to curtain his maverick spirit. He’s coming up against corporate filmmaking and isn’t really able to break through.

Until he makes The Player, ironically, in 1992. His scathing indictment of the Hollywood system is the film that actually brings him back into the Hollywood fold. As one member of the QFS discussion group posited - this is a really bad movie about making really bad movies.

Personally, I don’t think it’s a really bad movie but it’s definitely a movie that skewers movie conventions. It’s spoofs crime movies, romance movies, thrillers, and of course - the repeated take down of the long-standing complaint of filmmakers everywhere: Hollywood’s desire for a happy ending. The nearly eight-minute opening shot is of course often discussed - a continuous tracking shot complete with zooms gives allows us to spy. We listen in through windows or walk-and-talking conversations about movies, film gossip, and truly terrible script pitches. The Graduate 2, pitched by the writer of The Graduate (1968), Buck Henry, is straight-up genius. It sets up the gossipy world we’re about to enter and is reminiscent of the terrific camera work that’s a hallmark of all Altman’s films. I was particularly reminded of Nashville, another exploration of an entertainment industry but with a less acerbic tone.

Part of the nearly eight-minute long opening shot from The Player (1992) Directed by Robert Altman

But back to Hollywood’s ubiquitous desire for happy endings - this is probably Altman’s biggest gripe and obviously the thing he never really does in his films. They usually end with something ambiguous or even tragic, as in McCabe & Mrs. Miller or bittersweet and off-kilter as in The Long Goodbye. Here, to achieve his happy ending, it’s all satire. Tim Robbins as “Griffin Mill” is struggling to keep his prominence in the studio, fighting the upstart Peter Gallagher (“Larry Levy”). He’s being stalked, then kills someone. He’s then suspected of murder. Then runs from the law. Then is caught. But then a year later, he’s running the studio. And gets the girl. It’s searing and brutal what Altman is saying here - immoral psychopaths run the film business. Altman has claimed this is light satire, but this feels more like a brutal takedown and indictment.

The fascinating thing about this movie is the abundance of cameos. It features the most amount of Oscar nominees in a single film - because they’re all playing themselves. Except then you get Whoopie Goldberg (“Detective Susan Avery”) who shows up and is holding an Oscar in her first scene - but she’s not playing herself, an Oscar winner and former host. It’s just on the edge of being too cute for its own good.

Flowers and the perfect life crowd the frame in the final shot of The Player (1992), a parody of Hollywood’s desire for happy endings.

Shameless people who will suffer no consequences - if this ever was a film for the #metoo era, or to show the conditions that bring about people who act without fear of repercussions, this is it. It was particularly unnerving to watch this during the WGA strike - not only does a studio executive actually murder someone, but there is another studio executive (Larry Levy) who comes up with a story idea just by reading the paper and says writers can be eliminated. Despite being definitely a product of the early 1990s - as evidenced by the phones and in-car fax - it is more than relevant for today in that respect.

The entire film is worth it to see the payoff of Habeas Corpus coming together and basically doing all the things that the director claimed they wouldn’t do - sell out and make it commercial. The fact that they have Bruce Willis, who is probably in the top 3 greatest action stars in the world at this time along with rising star Julia Roberts in this fake movie within the movie is truly fantastic. And the movie is so bad that it’s perfect for the “light satire” Altman wants to portray here.

Rushmore (1998)

QFS No. 120 - The invitation for August 30, 2023
We return to Wes Anderson, he of the recent Asteroid City (2023) and of QFS No. 59, The Darjeeling Limited (2007), making this the second of his films to be selected for QFS. Which is among the highest honors of cinema.

Rushmore is Anderson’s second film and I’d argue this is the one that really planted his flag on the film world’s map. His first film Bottle Rocket (1996) is terrific, was an indie darling, and introduced him and Luke and Owen Wilson to the world. But Rushmore gets a bigger cast, a wider release, and is a stronger film in many ways.

I saw Rushmore at the State Theater in Ann Arbor when it first came out while I was in college, and I remember really liking it but also being slightly puzzled about why I liked it. This was the first movie by this new filmmaker that I’d seen, and I vividly remember the marketing attempting to portray this as a comedy. It’s funny, for sure, but it’s not the kind of humor that plays well in short television spots.

On future viewings, I realized that this wasn’t intended to be funny or conventional and I started to understand more about the unique voice and style of Wes Anderson – who I’ve grown to love as a filmmaker. The other day I was saying that I can’t remember when was the last time I’ve seen Rushmore and lo and behold! It’s playing in Greater Los Angeles! In Eagle Rock, and to be exact at the new Vidiots.

A brief word about Vidiots. Vidiots was a beloved DVD rental store in Santa Monica near Santa Monica High School – the kind of store that both filmmakers and non-filmmakers could love. Mainstream titles next to obscure movies. New releases and films divided by director instead of only by subject. Truly a film lover’s place run by film lovers – the place LA deserved as the world’s movie capital. Vidiots suffered financial difficulties like all rental places did with the advent of streaming and converted to a nonprofit foundation model to stay alive. They still ended up having to close up the Santa Monica shop. But with financial help they kept their video stock in storage and the foundation kept the Vidiots spirit alive.

Like a proper Hollywood zombie, they rose from the dead, took over an old theater in a suburb on the complete other side of Los Angeles from Santa Monica, and opened their doors earlier this year. Not only do they rent movies, but they now screen them as well. They’ve just utterly exploded in popularity this year – every single screening is sold out before an enthusiastic crowd and they’ve revitalized a commercial section of Eagle Rock just in the few months they’ve been open. There are scant few good stories about the theater going experience and the motion picture industry in general these days, but this is truly a happy one. I stopped by the new spot a little while ago just to check it out, but this will be my first time seeing a film in person at the resurrected theater attached to the resurrected video store.

I think seeing Rushmore at Vidiots is a perfect way to start watching films at this new venue. Watch Rushmore however you can we’ll discuss next week!

Rushmore (1998) Directed by Wes Anderson

Reactions and Analyses:
Since Rushmore (1998) came out, we’ve had more than two decades of films by Wes Anderson. This, perhaps, set my expectations in a particular way. Anderson’s style has been parodied and mimicked, a style that seemingly has always been defined as “quirky.” His use of flat space, center-framed, direct-to-the-camera looks from his characters and their manner of speaking, the editing - all that artifice can have the effect of keeping a viewer at arm’s length. Something to admire, but rarely to connect on an emotional level.

I say this because I was surprised at my reaction to watching Rushmore for the first time in at least a decade. For me, Anderson’s work has recently favored style over substance and it’s hard to remember that this wasn’t always the case, that his filmmaking was once new and novel. Rushmore moved me in a way I had not expected or had remembered from the times I watched before. Perhaps it has been overshadowed in my mind by The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) where we see the director’s style blossom full scale and continue onward. I’d argue that The Royal Tenenbaums is the first real “Wes Anderson Film” where he’s unshackled, has a large budget, and no one is impeding his directing.

Rushmore is much more sweet than I remember and has something to say about loss, about loneliness and dealing with both of those without healthy tools to do so. There’s a sweetness to it - bittersweetness, even - that I hadn’t remember and didn’t give Anderson credit for at the time. Of his live action films, it’s a contest between Rushmore and Moonrise Kingdom (2012) to be his most poignant and sweet. There’s a somewhat happy ending, after all - Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) dances with Rosemary (Olivia Williams) and has an actual girlfriend (Sara Tanaka as “Margaret Yang”).

On Letterboxd, I read Sean Fennessey of The Ringer call Rushmore “the best movie about a sociopath.” This is entirely possible. A QFSer added to that, saying Max is “Ferris Bueller but a dick.”

Perhaps Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) was under-appreciated at Rushmore Academy? From Rushmore (1998) Directed by Wes Anderson.

However true this might be, it’s also entirely possible that Rushmore Academy was not the perfect school of Max. I know for a fact that there are schools on the Westside of Los Angeles that encourage ambitious, driven students who may not succeed in academics but flourish in project-based learning. (I’m not saying these schools would necessarily approve the building of a research aquarium on its grounds, but they probably wouldn’t have kicked out Max for that level of ambition.) The editorial cut from Dr. Guggenheim (Brian Cox) saying “He’s one of the worst students we’ve got” and then it goes into the montage of all the things Max does at school - it shows what’s valued in this academic environment. He might be full of crazy leadership energy, but he’s failing all the learning from books. (He even dreams that his skill in calculus is on par with his extra-curricular ambitions.)

Speaking of montages, it’s time to honor Wes Anderson as one of the true masters of montages. He’s in a category all his own. Between the Max’s clubs-and-groups montage that introduce the character and the montage where Max and Herman Blume (Bill Murray) are battling each other and it escalates - truly fantastic. There’s a real art to getting the montage right and Anderson does do it a lot in all his films. But in Rushmore, they are masterful. Funny, advancing the plot or character development, spot-on music choices. Having put together montages myself I can tell you there’s definitely an art to them. They can go on too long or feel frivolous or have the wrong music choice. There are so many ways to abuse them, but Anderson uses them to near perfection.

It’s no wonder that one of Anderson’s inspirations is The Graduate (1967). Mike Nichols has a montage of Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) having an affair with Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) that spans time and space, editing from one location into another, all to the music of Simon and Garfunkel. Anderson undoubtedly studied this extensively. Throw in Hal Ashby’s offbeat humor and relationship in Harold and Maude (1971) and the student journey in 400 Blows (1959) and you get the origins of Rushmore and the mind at its helm.

Max’s journey is pretty fascinating in the film, both in its content and its structure. He goes from an ambitious student who, except for his grades, is an ideal representative of Rushmore Academy. He loves the school and gives it all of his time, falls in love with the new teacher Rosemary Cross (Olivia Wilde), befriends Blume a wealthy parent, inadvertently starting a rivalry over Rosemary’s affection. He gets kicked out of the one place he loves and then, finally, resurrects himself - both emotionally and academically at the public school - at least enough to use his ambition to produce a massive stage production at his new school that helps bring Rosemary and Blume together.

Max and Blume (Bill Murray) watching wrestling at Rushmore Academy.

What’s there to make of a journey like this? It’s not rooted in realism, but there’s an emotional core in Rushmore. He lies about his sexual exploits with a parent, he hides the fact that his mother’s died, he lies about his father’s profession and that he has simple, middle class home and life outside of Rushmore. So he’s a sociopath, sure. But he’s lonely and his primary existential crisis, I believe, is that he’s ordinary. So he does whatever he can to be extraordinary (other than study, apparently). It’s teenage melancholy, not angst, that Anderson concerns himself with. And boy, is that refreshing.

Anderson benefitted for coming up through the golden age of independent film in the 1990s. Bottle Rocket (1996), though excellent, does not necessarily suggest giving someone enough money to make Rushmore. But this was an odd blip in the long history of the American film industry where money to finance small, personal independent films was actually out there. Perhaps not on par with the 1970s, and not that it was easy, but there were some great character driven, auteurist fare being produced by mainstream studios and their offshoots. (Personal note - I started my career at the tail end of this era when money for indie films was drying up everywhere so I know this time period first hand.)

In our QFS discussion, I asked whether people think Rushmore is a landmark film. By that I meant - is this a film that you can say demarks a change in either the film industry, directing, the visual medium, etc? One way to tell is by copycats. In the era this film came out, I consider Pulp Fiction (1994) in that category. Not a year went by for a long time where there weren’t a dozen other movies with smart-talkin’ pop-culture quoting hitmen or unnerving violence in a mainstream film or something that played with structure and time the way that movie does.

By that definition, Rushmore might be in the “landmark” category, though QFSers were mixed on that point. There were certainly spoofs and mimics and perhaps a handful of copycats. I remember one brutal review of Napoleon Dynamite (2004), calling it “a Wes Anderson cover band.” I’m not sure if there was a wave other than that of knockoffs. He’s one of a kind - one of the only people working today who you can say “a Wes Anderson Film” and you have a genre unto itself.

And while The Royal Tenenbaums sprouted into the first of this singular genre, Bottle Rocket was its seed and Rushmore its seedling. It was a joy to rewatch that seedingling again and know that a bright future was ahead for one of the true auteurs in American cinema.

The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1943)

QFS No. 3 - The invitation for May 13, 2020
Preston Sturges is one of my favorite American filmmakers of the pre- and early post-war era. His Sullivan’s Travels (1941) and Hail The Conquering Hero (1944) are exceptional works of writing and subtle-to-overt social criticism through satire – especially during the studio system era. A handful of us were fortunate to catch Hail The Conquering Hero in the theater here in LA for our predecessor Wednesday Night Film Society get together at the New Beverly Cinema several years ago.

The Miracle at Morgan’s Creek has been on my “to watch” list for some time, so I figured let me use this opportunity in quarantine to encourage everyone to embrace their primal love of black and white cinema. Also this is probably the exact opposite type of film than the previous week. (We’re going to swing back and forth a lot with these selections!)

Join us if you can – details to follow.

The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1943) Directed by Preston Sturges

Reactions and Analyses:
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1943) is a surprisingly subversive film. At the center of the story is Trudy (Betty Hutton) who is pregnant and doesn’t know who the father is. But she knows it’s a soldier because she was at a wild farewell party for a group of soldiers heading off to fight in World War II and had hit her head on a chandelier. She believes she married a soldier but doesn’t even know his last name for sure so they can’t find him.

Just stopping there - this is extraordinary. Think about 1943 and 1944 when this film is released by Paramount Pictures. How could a major movie studio release a film with this borderline blasphemous plot during the height of World War II when the nation was mobilized in unwavering support for the war effort and American soldiers conscripted to fight overseas? The premise suggests that a woman was so blackout drunk at a party with soldiers, enjoying the company of one or more of them, then got pregnant and has to figure out what to do now.

Throw in the hapless Norval (Eddie Bracken) who throws on a uniform as if to solve the problem as they fake a marriage, where things continue to go awry, and you take it from tragedy to comedy really quickly, with moral questions at its center.

The only filmmaker of that time - especially for a comedy - who could credibly pull this off is Preston Sturges. A true auteur before the word ever came into being even in France, Sturges was writing and directing his own films with his own unique voice. You can look no further than the terrific Hail the Conquering Hero (1944) from this same year (also starring Eddie Bracken) which skewers the idea of war heroism. There, Eddie Bracken’s “Woodrow” is discharged from the military after only a month, but a small lie - that he fought abroad - spirals out of control as everyone treats him as a returning hero. He’s suddenly the toast of his home town, rekindling an old love, even picked to run for mayor.

Here, in The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, there’s a similar theme - this idea that soldiers are unassailable demigods and not fallible humans. That war and military service is the measure of greatness.

By the end of the film, Trudy gives birth to six boys in a truly wild delivery room sequence that features a harried Norval and a frantic doctor. The news makes it around the world - both the fact that someone gave birth to six children but also that they were all, miraculously, boys. This is portrayed as a sign of American virility and prowess, of American might and righteousness. It’s wacky, it’s nonsensical, and the time frame of it all makes no sense. But it’s the perfect conclusion to a Sturges film.

One QFSer brought up that this is all tongue-in-cheek. Sturges is saying that all of this American moral superiority is nonsense and deserving of ridicule. Or at the very least, deserving of at least a mirror to show ourselves how shallow and self-delusional it all really is. Sturges’ tone borders on sarcastic, but it’s not sarcasm exactly. It’s farce - social criticism covered up by farce. Whether it worked on that level for audiences at the time is perhaps unclear now, but it certainly clear upon watching in 2020. The brilliance of Sturges here, and in all his work, is how it endures even though it was meant to probe the cultural and social norms of the time.