I enjoyed the American Masters,

Woody Allen, a Documentary, immensely, even if it is, basically, a film version of Eric Lax's (Lax is also one of the "witnesses") glowing, sanitized authorized biography of Mr Allen.

I did not want a hatchet job, but more objectivity would be appreciated, and, I imagine, will eventually come down the pipeline in the future.

"I need the eggs"

And, I guess, we will never see the "rest" of Annie Hall, particularly, the Allen as a New York Knick fantasy sequence, until after Allen's death.

In fact, it will be interesting to see, if Allen's estate will let commentaries, deleted scenes, and other feature-ettes be part of Allen's blu rays in the future.  I hope so.  He (and his audience) deserve them, even if Allen finds them abominable.  (Though, part of me, likes that Allen lets the films stand on their own in dvd form.  I am v torn.)

I wish they would have told the Marshall McLuhan story; Allen wanted someone else and was furious and pouted for ages, even when McLuhan was on the set.  He need not have worried, obv, because the scene is American film history now, and insanely funny, and perfect.

But I did like that they highlighted Pauline Kael's famous last quote from her review of Stardust Memories (a sadly prophetic film about celebrity -- John Lennon was murdered by an adoring fan just after its' release -- that I rather enjoy, despite its' bleakness):

If Woody Allen finds success very upsetting and wishes the public would go away, this picture should help him stop worrying.

David Thomson does not like Allen's films much, either, (though Thomson seems to have softened his attitude towards Allen in his latest installment of his Biographical Dictionary of Film) and John Simon hated Woody.

As much as I respect Kael and Thomson, (John Simon was a douche and was constantly getting exposed in Review of Reviewers in Spy Magazine) they are both wrong.  Woody Allen is one of the greatest American film makers, period, full stop.





See you Monday nights at Mortons
- Celia Brady

"There's no secret to how you attack somebody.

The "Godfather" of Fox News



The one who let it all slip away.

 You call them a dirty son of a bitch.  And if you can't use the word son of a bitch you put it in something else in the paper ...  And you always suggest sodomy.  Always.  That's important.  And the communism business, which was lousy, a cheap, rotten way to hurt somebody.  And it would stick in America.  You know, by pointing a finger and calling him a communist.  That could stick."

That is a quote from Jimmy Breslin about William Randolph Hearst and Orson Welles, from the Oscar-nominated documentary, The Battle Over Citizen Kane.  (Made by two gentlemen named Epstein and Lennon, which I have always found amusing.) 

And you would like to believe that things have changed in seventy years.  But they have not, really.

************

Today sees the release of the 70th Anniversary Edition of Citizen Kane on blu-ray.  All editions include The Battle Over Citizen Kane with the 1941 masterpiece. 

What Pauline Kael said decades ago is just as true, if perhaps, truer today:  "Citizen Kane is perhaps the one American talking picture that seems as fresh now as the day it opened.  It may seem even fresher." 

She is so right.

I am working on an epic

Post, mostly aboot Peter Sellers and Roger Lewis.  That post is still nowhere near for publication, frustratingly.

In the meantime, I would strongly urge you to read two articles in the most recent Atlantic magazine.  One is by Caitlin Flanagan (normally not a big fave of mine), entitled, The Hazards of Duke (splendid title! Give that intern/copy writer/editor a raise!)  The article, actually a review of a frickin' PowerPoint that Duke student, Karen Owen, "shared" w/ three of her friends, and has thusly become a lightning-rod for feminists; the execrable, Megyn Kelly at Fox News; and others is essential reading.


But so is the article/review right after it.  That is called Hard Core and it is by Natasha Vargas-Cooper.  This article/review is about how pornography is stripping bare the notion that men and women are the same, that a heterosexual "contract" for sex is ultimately a bust.  My ears were buzzing as I read because not just a week ago I gleefully listened to Fran Lebowitz talk about how facts are facts, much as we would not like to admit it, women are different than men, especially when it comes to sex.  The article is crucial but was the tiniest bit creepy to me personally.  Ms Vargas-Cooper in her article, quotes Martin Amis (from Yellow Dog!), Susan Sontag, & Pauline Kael.  


Uh, those are three of my all-time favorite authors and I still believe that I am one of the dozen or so on the planet that thinks Yellow Dog is a good novel.  


The Atlantic is still good.  Not as good as it was even a few years ago but it is like Spy in the sense, that for me, I always go to the back pages first, looking for Sandra Tsing Loh or reviews like these two I have mentioned here.  In Spy, I always went straight to Review of Reviewers.  

Karen Owen, part of her infamous PowerPoint.

Plus, maybe that means I will get a Tsing Loh review/article next month.

Here it frickin' is:  The PowerPoint. 

Oh, my frickin' goodness,

I have so much to write aboot & once agin, so little time.  I have seen slightly more than a few movies recently that I would like to discuss.  And if I were any kind of real writer I would link the "reviews", if you will, Pauline Kael-New Yorker stylee.

I will try my bestest.

First, I have another correction for my blog:  Benedict Cumberbatch & Olivia Poulet are not  married.  They are long-time partners according to commenter Anonymous.  And if any fucking person is taking the time to make a comment on my sorry-ass blog, I am taking their correction as gospel.  So there.  


I fucking nearly cried (has got to be the worst paragraph link in history) when I watched Soderburgh's Spalding Gray "doc" OnDemand (for the second time) last night.  Soderburgh nailed it.  No voice-over, no "history" whathaveyou, just Spalding Gray telling his life story through his monologues & interviews.  Some would say (on Fox News), "What about his suicide?" Well, Soderburgh was smart enough, and disciplined enough, to proclaim through his film, 'That if Spuddy di'n't tell that story or appear in that interview then it does not make my film.'


(SPOILER ALERT! STOP NOW IF YOU ARE UNFAMILIAR W/ GRAY'S ANATOMY!) Of course, Soderburgh makes us cry at the end, w/ the howling dogs and the home movies. But the other, more crucial thing aboot this excellent film, basically aboot death and suicide, is how alive it makes me feel.  


Say what you will aboot Gray's neuroses & hypochondria & desperate pleas for attention & fame, yet Gray told a kind of straight white-man truth that so many of us can identify with.  & do identify with.  & he did it through near the most esoteric, pretentious sort of way; monologues, performed on-stage, part of the off-Broadway, avant-garde (&, gawd, does not this country hate the avant-garde [especially if it originates from New York, like his performances did.])    


I worked w/ a woman who knew Gray.  She proclaimed to me aboot numerous late-night phone calls, what a nuisance he was.  I di'n't believe her then & I do not believe her now.  


Gray was an incredible talent who did something I honestly believe I could do, as well.  He was so fortunate to be in Manhattan, w/ the Wooster Group, just when he discovered what his talent was.  He was a fragile fragile soul; exposed, seduced, and intoxicated with, yet terrified of fame.  


It was my buddy, Chris (I had made him watch Swimming to Cambodia & Monster in a Box) who told me that Gray was missing.  Everyone knew.  I knew.  Even then.  Everyone knew he had taken his own life.  


But Soderburgh shows all the wisdom, hilarity, depth, & heart that made Gray such a great (albeit troubled) soul.  


Gray, from Rhode Island, was really a New Yorker, a Manhattan-ite, living there, working there for a great period of his fame & livelihood.  Well, if the Gray's Manhattan art scene is something to be admired, reached for, the Manhattan art scene of the film, Tiny Furniture, is something I would like to avoid like the plague.  


Do not get me wrong, I liked the film.  But it is so New York, so, "My Dad writes for TV," if you know what I mean.  Some of the pop culture references fall completely flat, they are utilized way way too soon to resound w/ any kind of serious mainstream audience.  (Let us face it, if you are showing your fucking film in Fresno or, say, Tulsa, where this film will play, then it had better play, no matter whatever your college-kid intentions were.)  


I am flipping back & forth.  I loved the Charlotte character.  I loved the party scene where our protagonist is exposed as an attention whore.  I loved how we are expected to love this contemptible, self-hating woman.  I loved the film's depiction of the New York art scene as empty & blind to the new wave of media.  


But, I cannot get over the fact that she cast herself in the starring role, of a film she directed, w/ her real-life Mom and real-life sister playing those roles.  Even Plath's satiric, The Bell Jar, does not make me cringe like this film does.  


The sex scene in the tube? Is it a reference to Fast Times? & why am I not believing it anyway? 


Honestly, this director could grow & become a Todd Solondz-like master, or could fade away in to avant garde video theater & be never heard from again (except for cultish chick-y, gay types in the Village.)

Spalding Gray, made me change my mind what theater was.

OKAY, Fran Lebowitz, the Major & the Minor tomorrow.