VOLUME 21 - NUMBER 03 MAY-JUNE 1985

OnCastro's to a Certain Point we aves togeth e r Convertible themes of class and sex bias in the tale of an intellectual scriptwriter working on a Pastor Vega's Habanera. film about machismo in th e workpl ace who falls in lo ve with hi s s ubj e ct , a by Pat Aufderheide home, as they were spelled out in the woman dockworker. His control of \"the 1975 Family Code. (The code mandat- issue\" falls apart, like his marriage and \"Twenty years since the taking of ed, for instance, that men should do half romance, under the strain. In Patakin! power;' wrote Cuban director Tomas the housework.) How much congruence director Manuel Octavia Gomez has Gutierrez Alea in a 1981 essay, Dialectic there is between ideal and reality is created a central character who synthe- of the Spectator, \"one can say that the reflected in the title of Gutierrez Alea's sizes Afro-Cuban myth , the cult of revolution has put behind it its most spec- ne,vest film, which borrows from the machismo, and the con-artist tradition of tacular moments.\" The cinema that had phrase a worker uses in one of the film's Cuba's infamous lumpen. He acts out a found its first subjects on the streets and interviews. Equality has been achieved, continuing attraction to macho stereo- on beaches-turned-battlefields could no he says , \"hasta un cierto punta~ (up to a types in a series of spectacular musical longer feed on heroics of the past. Cuban certain point), Alea's title. numbers. And in Amada , Humberto drama these days is in the work of trans- Salas reaches back into the past, finding forming daily life-a heroics of house- It's a phrase that \"vorks well to describe in doomed love a relationship between work, you might say. the achievements of these films, too. psychological repression and romantic Together, they shatter stereotypes and revolutionary ideals. Cuban filmmakers seem to have taken promise new directions; but they are that challenge seriously. The subject for unlikely to create the kind of critical furor There are subjects in sexuality that this exploring that process of self-transforma- that Lucia and Memories of Underdevel- new Cuban cinema does not sei ze tion is (in the fine tradition of entertain- opment did in 1969, when the interna- upon - homosexuality, for one; androg- ment features) sex. But the approach isn't tional film community looked to Cuba as yny, for another. Perhaps tellingly, none necessarily sexy. Oh, there are beauties, film's newest wave. of the anniversary films is made by a like the fresh young star of Se Permuta, woman. Isabel Santos, and delicately mature \"If all these structural changes don't Eslinda Nunez in Gutierrez Alea's Up to a create a fundamental change in the way Not that the men in these movies are Certain Point (Hasta un Gerto Punto). we relate to each other,\" filmmaker Pastor heroes, however much they may think There is passion. And jealousy didn't die Vega observed of the Cuban Revolution, they are. As Oscar (Oscar Alvarez), the with the revolution. But sex is the subject \"then we will have faIled:' The record, to scriptwriter in Up to a Certain Point, puts of this socialist cinema because sex roles judge from these films' documentation of it, \"I was criticized for being arrogant. So are socially created. the way traditional Latin, Catholic, and I admitted it. And now I'm perfect.\" The bourgeois culture lives on in Cuba's bed- movie is not gentle in its criticisms: Oscar Six Cuban features, produced in 1984 rooms and offices, is mixed. and his director are waited on by their to honor the 25th annjversary of the revo- wives as they blather on about equality; lution and shown in New York last March, In Vega's Habanera, a coolly compe- Oscar's wife frantically paces the floor offer an idiosyncratic survey of the state tent psychiatrist can handle crises precip- while he stays out all night with the dock- of the heart of socialist society. Reflected itated by exile, torture , and racism but worker. The sight of the psychiatrist's on the screen are the ideals and reality of can't exorcise her own anxiety over her husband in Habanera blandly lying to her mutual respect and equality between husband's affair with one of her patients. at the breakfast table could raise a cross- men and women, both at work and at In two contemporary situation comedies, cultural female chorus of that old refrain, Se Permuta and Tables Turned, love \"You can't live with 'em, and ...\" In Tables brings not only marriage but visions (or Turned, a young lover becomes spiteful nightmares) of bourgeois domesticity. Up when his mother falls in love with his girl- friend's father; he had thought her love was all for him. His prospective father-in- law turns old-fashioned patriarch when he discovers his daughter's pregnancy. Patakin!'s supermacho Shango Valdes reaps the scorn not only of his virginal lady love but of bevies of beauties who mock him for a blowhard. Cuba's leading filmmakers seem to have adopted a line from Pogo: We have met the enemey, and he is us. But if there are overtones of male guilt in these films, there is also vigor, humor, and an array of highly individual styles. • The Cuban film institute's structure, while state sponsored, actually fosters auteurism, with its small-scale workshop atmosphere and freedom from didactic projects. (Films not aimed at theatr'ical 49

when he sometimes fails to see what Gutierrez Alea shows us, the film achieves insight along with emotional involvement. At 68 minutes, the film is almost a sketch for future work. It refused to come together easily, and was designed and redesigned as the filmmakers experi- enced a process of discovery similar to their protagonists, videotaping interviews and searching for central conflicts. The final structure is none too sturdy, and the end is even more ambiguous and unre- solved than the subject matter requires. An abrupt freeze-frame of a bird frozen in mid-flight accompanies a cloying Basque song about the need to let birds (and love) fly free. But this is not a film that requires neat resolutions to validate its experi- ments, some of which work. The inter- play-guided expertly by editor Miriam Talavera - between documentary, pseudo-documentary, and fiction is an attempt to turn an issue into a human process. Gutierrez Alea is unhappy with the re- Asseneh Rodriguez in Patakin! sult, even though it was a hit in Cuba. \"It was popular because of the love story;' he audiences are made by film departments attempt to finish the sentence that Mem- said on a recent trip to New York. \"But in individual ministries.) Directors as- ories begins. the film I wanted to make was about the sume the shaping role of a producer and way bourgeois values linger on, and that often write their own scripts or work Memories' protagonist was a profes- would've taken more developing of the without them. Next to the director, prob- sional who, at the moment of revolution, tension between the scriptwriter and ably the most important creative force in chose to stay in Cuba but not to join the director. new society. At the time, Gutierrez Alea Cuban film is the film editor, who along imagined a sequel, about a professional \"As it is, the film focuses on the with the cinematographer often makes up who did join but in many ways remained machismo problem.I wanted originally to a semi-permanent unit with a director. bourgeois. The film took 20 years to use that as a point of departure to look at The open mandate -limited by tiny start, he says now, because it needed a machismo not only as a relationship be- budgets, scarce film stock, and audience generation of lived experience to draw tween men and women, but as an attitude appeal-allows ambition to flourish. And from. Even now, he wonders if Cuba's that pervades social relations - an while everyone would like a hit , the pres- professionals are ready for a self-criticism authoritarianism. But I know that didn't tige ambition of Cuban cinema is to shape like this. come out-we only got up to a certain cinematic language in a way that Gutierrez Alea chose in this film a form point in this film;' And, he says, that is expresses onscreen the changing terms of that runs the risk of losing a spectator the point of takeoff for his next film, society. who came in for a good story, but that about the conflicts and passions of a fe- Cuban filmmaking set itself a formida- breaks through the omniscient perspec- male TV critic. • ble challenge at the outset in 1959 when the institute placed its priorities on docu- tive of the seamless narrative. Three kinds of footage are interwoven: video- Along with the search for the way to mentary production. In newsreels, taped interviews with dockworkers, the integrate documentary into fiction has shorts, and features, Cuban film earned a subject matter from which the script- gone the struggle to incorporate popular reputation for an art of real life. Gutierrez writer is drawing his materials; pseudo- traditions into Cuban cinema. There Alea's Memories of Underdevelopment documentary scenes of work life, both on was, for instance, the rich heritage of was a benchmark in integrating the the docks and in film studios; and inti- Afro-Cuban religion and ritual, long excitement of documentary into fiction; mate drama among the scriptwriter, his scorned by the elite and later frowned on the far bolder, disjunctive, and arresting wife, and his lover (the latter played by by a socialist government that saw it as an One Way or Another, by Sara Gomez, Mirta Ibarra, Gutierrez Alea's wife). underground culture of the lumpen. took the experiment to a new frontier. Their juxtaposition puts the viewer in the There was also a long and flamboyant his- And there, for a while, it stopped . position of Oscar, the scriptwriter, sur- tory of popular entertainment in music, Gomez died while finishing One ~y or veying the data, searching for the right dance, and theater, the kind of Caribbean Another, and fiction and documentary frame around the issues, sensing the con- show that Havana's Tropicana has now directors built few bridges across their flicts and contradictions. It makes us feel fossilized. Finally, there was a constant respective turfs. Up to a Certain Point is a the validity of Oscar's argument to his deluge of mass culture on radio, screen, bold attempt to rekindle the energy that director that investigation must shape, and later TV, coming from the outside flared with Gomez' work , as well as an even change, their work in progress. And but reworked once in Cuba. 50

For years, filmmaker Julio Garda mu sicals, Gomez delivers his social com- steamy, Cecilia bombed wit h C ub an Espinosa dreamed that he would make the Cuban soc iali st mu sical- energetic m e ntar y w ith la rger-th a n-life hum or. audie nces who cr iticized every deviation and ironic, sy ncretic and self-reflexive, a musical that would reclaim populist cul- Hou sewo rk mig ht never be th e same from th e book, and it baffled interna- ture for popular art. It seems now that Manuel Octavio Gomez may have done it again for C uban men and wo me n who tional c ritics. before him. Gomez is one of Cuba's most formally challenging directors. With its watch Shango's wife clea n house with a Solas wants to bring to the screen the heady mix of historical and journalistic styles, his First Charge of the Machete roomful of multipl y ing mop s and felt co ntradictions of romantic passio n. was a dazzling essay in pseudo-doc umen- tary. b r o o m s. His meat is repress ion, espec ially in the Gomez' Patakin! is a film that would • upp e r classes and among wo me n . His leave both Brecht and Busby Berkeley open-mouthed. It ought to make Chantal There may be no neater foil to a res t- mod e is to ex pl o it ci nema's ability to Akerman (for her Dancing '80s) and Francis Coppola (for his One from the less innovator like Gomez than Pastor make intimate emotio n spectacular. He Heart) envious. It works, when it works, on enough levels to crowd a finale act at Vega , the man who made Portrait of might have been a kind of Fassbinder for the Tropicana's floor show. Teresa. Vega sees in intimate contempo- Gothic romance , if th e fog that envelops There are no characters in Patakin! , only social stereotypes. But what stereo- rary drama the chance to document psy- his charcaters didn't engulf his film s. types! Shango Valdes himself is a hunk of hunks, a masculine ideal so overstated chological reality. \"You can't film the Amada was to be So las' comeback. that you can see in him the roots of thea- tricality in the Cuban gay community. No hearts of men with a candid camera;' he M ade on a ti g ht sc hedule and a s lim one is more conscious of the artificiality of sex roles than gays, and nowhere more says. In Teresa, the story of a working- budget , it proved Solas has disc ipline and so than in a Latin soc iety, where sex roles are rigidly defined. class woman caught betwee n work and can tell a story as well as create mood. But Caridad, girlfriend to Shango's respon- domestic demands , he touched a nerve; it doesn't work: The romantics and the sible and hardworking rival, Ogun Fernandez, is too lovely to get off her the film became a platform for heated di s- cynics in Amada are two sides of a coun- beauty-queen pedestal, while Shango's wily wife can transform herself into the cussion of women's rights. The tale was terfeit coin. Set in 1914, Amado's focu s is \"Crocodile Woman\" to terrorize him into fidelity. His preening sets up a pratfall developed from interviews with a Cuban a proper profes sional wife who fall s in that OgUn delivers , but not before con- fessing that it's dull being the good guy. psychologist about widespread stress love with her anarchist cousin, but the These cartoons are compo!,ed of pieces of pop culture; both Shango and OgUn reactions to rapidly changing social and film never gets below the surface of its are names of saints in Afro-Cuban cul- ture. More than simply mocking the economic opportunities for women. romantic conventions. Eslinda Nunez moral isms of a macho past and a socialist present, Gomez' characterizations also Vega's Habanera was an attempt to has nothing to do but pine, while her legitimize the vitality of grass-roots cul- tural traditions. take up that same subject matter from the lover remonstrates and writhes, and her The show numbers, hanging on a bare viewpoint of the psychologist's office. husband conspires with the maid to clothesline of a plot, are also showstop- pers, giving the pace a jerky quality. Tn Instead of the soap-operatic structure of manipulate her passion into control over the opening number, irony meets specta- cle when tractors, driven by singing fore- Teresa , this time Vega imagined a fiJm her property. Her death - she looks men, lumber to the front of the screen and behind them sway row upon row of that would have the rhythm of the Cuban exquisite in a coffin - marks a dead end fieldworkers choreographing their delight at meeting production quotas . Turning habanera song style. Art, like life, would for this attempt to use romance against the world into a soundstage, Gomez ran- sacks the history of pop culture and remain unresolved but full of tension . itself. • spoofs both Eastern and Western cine- matic cliches, as well as the petit bour- Unfortunately, the expectations of nar- geois' kitsch tastes . Giving cultural sym- bols a life of their own , and locating them rative are strong in closeup melodrama ; The missing ingredient in Cuban cin- inside a nostalgic frame evoking Thirties' an audience that comes to weep wants a ema was always comedy, especially situa- payoff. And Habanera keeps teasing the tion comedy. Now it comes from a audience with story beginnings that go yo unger generation, trained on tightly nowhere. A sniffler like Terms ofEndear- produced documentaries and unbur- ment may offer false catharsis, but at least dened with the memories of a period it takes viewers on an emotional ride. before the revolution . Both Se Permuta Further, Habanera's characters do not and Tables Turned are self-confident sit- command interest. You know you're in for coms, in which the conflicts of emerging a session with the uptight soul of the pro- socialist lifestyles are the subject of slap- fessional class when, as in the beginning stick and sly humor. of An Unmarried Woman , you see the Juan Carlos Tablo made Se Permuta heroine out jogging. By the end this ther- from a highly successful play that he apist's problems rival the angst of In- wrote, and its ingenious premise works as teriors' WASPs or the middle of a Bergman well onscreen as onstage. The joke is bad marriage. • simple: In a country with a severe hous- ing shortage (where people exchange Humberto Solas has sought in cinema dwellings rather than sell them as their a multi-sensory poetry, a way to make a marriages break up and reform) , apart- self-critical dream. He has had striking ment-swapping is fueled by heartthrobs , successes (Lucia) and ambitious failures hearth-lust, and sexual and social aspira- (Cantata de Chile). Still, since the early tions. In Se Permuta , a mother executes a days of the Cuban film institute , he has complicated three-way housing swap to been the soul of the place with his sym- move her daughter to a neighborhood phonic, emotion-rich films. A few years where she can meet a better class of boy. ago, the institute placed all its bets on When her daughter gets engaged to a fast- him, turning over nearly the entire fea- talking ad man , she begins another round · ture budget to his Cecilia , made from one of swaps to win them a dream house. And of Cuba's classic novels. Structureless- of course no sooner is the plan in place the intuitive Solas, who started out as an than the lovers start swapping partners. architect, works without scripts - and Tablo has a sardonic social eye and also 51

1000's &1000's of Video Titles a freewheeling love of comic conven- on VHS, BETA, CEO &Laserdisc- tions. He makes the very act of story- telling into a joke, with freeze-frames in Nobody Has More! which cartoon balloons register com- ments and iris-eye lenses that execute Featuring transitions. The core of his story, how- ever, is ageless: true love among honest • The Classics (and Not-So-Classics) people. Still, even though the pretty girl student ends up with the hardworking • Foreign Films • Rarities • How-To's socialist engineer, her mother succeeds • Nostalgic TV Shows • New Relt,aSEI!G~ in the scramble up the social (and hous- ing) ladder. • Music Videos • Documentaries In Rolando Dfaz' Tables Turned, ~~II\"\"I Films • A\"n~d Countless Others Cuban cinema asserts the right to be slight. Hewing to traditional situation ; comedy conventions, it grazes over the ground of sex-role stereotypes and the by residue of bourgeois morality without offering much in the way of insights or Movies Unlimited exits. The one-note theme of the film is male infantilism; the women win every ORDER WITH CONFIDENCE time. The end, with the birth of twin girls, suggests that the men have been FROM ONE OF AMERICA'S bested by biology itself. It's fast-paced enough, however, to survive alone on its OLDEST AND MOST RELIABLE (Catalog fees refunded with first comedy of embarrassment. Diaz draws HOME VIDEO SERVICES from experience; he made the popular Like aduh movies? Enclose an additional' documentary Controversia, in which groups of men and women argue over sex $3.50 for our huge Aduh Video Catalog. roles and social responsibility. It seems to have touched a common chord, too, ---------------------------AJ~:a:::tl~~~~® --- drawing large audiences in Cuba. MOVIES UNLIMITED6736 Castor Ave.· Phila., PA 19149·215-722-8298 • o Enclosed is $5 cash. check or money order ($10 outside USA-in US funds only) . Send me your new o video catalog . plus periodic updates of new releases and sale items . Twenty-five years into cinema that feeds on social change and its attendant Enclosed is $8 .50 . Please include your adult video catalog. I am over 18 years old . conflicts, the new Cuban cinema is Name _____________________________________________________ changing-and in several cases, turning the camera on itself. Self-reflexiveness, Address ___________________________________________________ whether it leads to self-criticism, self- City ____________________________ State _ _ _ Zip _ _ __ consciousness, or plain old rib-prodding, is all over the anniversary films. Jokes Phone ( © 1984 Movies Unlimited Inc. about the shortages of socialism are also jokes about movies. In Se Permuta, for instance, our hero tries to hail a taxi (a rare item); when one stops immediately, he is so surprised that he does a double take and shrugs into the camera. During the umpteenth housing swap, one of the characters watches a popular Cuban TV show of movie criti- cism; the critic is faulting this film for repeating its own joke too many times. In Patakin! one character reproves another by saying, \"Haven't you been watching the movie?\" Up to a Certain Point is dot- ted with filmic in-jokes, including the sight of a character reading Gutierrez Alea's Dialectic of the Spectator in bed and avoiding his wife's advances. Life and art are seducing each other on the screen in these films. It's a process that ranges from charming to challenging, even when the affair doesn't end happily ever after. ~ 52

'The Bird Is On His Own' Jack Nicholson Oscar. But the critics knew a tiger by his interviewed by Beverly Walker tone: Five Easy Pieces followed in 1970, and once again playing the black sheep of As Charley Partanna, dim-witted son a di s tinguished famil y, he was ca ll ed \"exhilarating... a charming wastral\" and of a Mafia consigliere to the powerful \"as tonishingl y natural.\" Another Oscar nomination was inevitable. Prizzi family, Jack Nicholson presides In one of many interviews following over Prizzi's Honor , his 39th film. With Easy Rider's phenomenal success, Den- nis Hopper described the Nicholson sincerity fairly oozing from every pore character as symbolizing \" trapped America, killing itself.\" That description and calculation flashing from every eye- may embrace the emergent Nicholson screen persona. Time after time, the ball, the whole cunning Mafioso lot man- actor has evoked empathy and identifica- tion with characters whose actions and ages to make the dark side of their way of attitudes are repellent or obstreperous. In Carnal Knowledge he humiliated life seem an unfortunate by-product of women; in The Shining he tried to kill his wife and son; in The Postman Always ordinary frailties . Though monstrous, Rings Twice he made murder for love thinkable and then did it. Even when he they have charm. plays sympathetic characters, as in The Last Detail, Chinatown, Reds or Terms of Directed by John Huston who has kept Endearment, Nicholson is Peck's Bad Boy who gets away with a bushel. company with such types before, most Many of Jack Nicholson's films have notably in Beat the Devil and The Maltese pushed at the outer edges of what main- stream society can tolerate. This, too, is Falcon, the film features the fast-rising part of his mystique. Critic Pauline Kael commented upon his \"satirical approach Kathleen Turner, Anjelica Huston, Rob- to macho\" which helps him escape our wrath. True, but some saw obscenity, not ert Loggia, John Randolph , Lee Richard- satire, in Carnal Knowledge, a film so controversial it was argued all the way to son and William Hickey as the don. How- the Supreme Court. ever, Prizzi's operatic tone (cinematogra- Any person as successful and indepen- dent as Nicholson can be endlessly ana- phy by Andrej Barkowiak; music by Puc- lyzed. Nicholson's brilliance is his obvi- ous, intelligent gift for both embodying cini, arrangement by Alex North), its and commenting upon his character in one seamless evocation. He forgives unusual mix of Runyonesque satire, and them their trespasses even as he renders them utterly transparent. It is no accident its Brechtian tragedy give it a special that Nicholson has always played Ameri- cans, and then usually an archetype who place in the Huston oeuvre, and suggest nearly everyone recognizes - comfort- ably or uncomfortably-as some0ne the presence of another, equally power- close to home. We intuitively sense something of the man himself in those ful , sensibility. squirming fictional men. \"Everyone is caged but it shouldn't be that way,\" he This belongs to novelist Richard Con- once said. \"I've never let anyone think they own me:' don who, along with documentarist Janet Nicholson has never much cared what Roach, adapted his book for the director. he looked like onscreen nor has he, like most stars, calculated an icon's image for Condon's co-mingling of the sacred and himself. He slicked his hair back and wore spectacles for The King of Marvin profane has made him one of the most Gardens (1972) , walked through half of popular contemporary fiction writers with something to say, not just sell. The Manchurian Candidate, based upon his second novel and released in 1962, is a classic. Prizzi :s Honor is sufficiently iconoclas- tic and anti-romantic to have given cold feet to several studio executives and prob- ably could not have been made without Nicholson, who singularly-and effort- lessly-dominates the movie. With vul- nerability made palpable, he makes the sotto capo inescapably sympathetic. It is not the first time Nicholson has made the preposterous dilemma of a character absolutely real. His extraordinary ability In Prizzi's Honor. to shade his characters manifested itself in Easy Rider, the 1969 eclat which denly looks flat and foolish ;' wrote New hurled him to stardom. York Times' critic Vincent Canby. \"The As the alcoholic ACLU lawyer who movie felt empty after his death ;' com- wigs out on the subject of UFO's, Nichol- mented Esquire's Jacob Brackman - and son swiped the movie. Half-way through so on, and so on. Official Hollywood, the Dennis Hopper's and Peter Fonda's tour Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sci- through counter-culture exotica, \"they ences-which had not noticed Nicholson come upon a very real character and in any of his 20 earlier, low-budget Roger everything that has come before sud- Corman quickies-nominated him for an 53

Chinatown (1974) with a band-aid on his mation I'd have had to take a cut in salary, began to think that the finest modern nose, turned grotesque in The Shining so I didn't. But yes, I can draw a little. writer was the screen actor. This was in and scruffy in Goin' South (1978)-the the spirit of the Fifties where a very anti- only one (of two; Drive, He Said pre- What was your first professional literary literature was emerging- Ken- ceeded) he directed and starred in. engagement? neth Patchen and others. I kind of There's a hint of a dare to his fans in believed what Nietzsche said, that noth- Nicholson to reject him, yet the opposite Tea and Sympathy at the Players Ring. I ing not written in your blood is worth is true: He is a surgeon cutting to the made $14 a week. During the run I got reading; it's just more pollution of the air- bone of human sturdiness. Nowhere is my first agent , as well as some work on waves. If you're going to write, write one this clearer than in his poignant portrayal Matinee Theatre, a live TV daytime poem all your life, let nobody read it, and of the seedy, out of shape astronaut in drama. Ralph Acton helped me a lot. then burn it. This is very young thinking, Terms of Endearment, for which he won I confess, but it is the seminal part of my all three major critic organizations' Of course I tried to keep my day job life. This was the collage period in paint- awards and the Oscar-for a supporting during this period but they closed the ing, the influence of Duchamp and oth- role. MGM cartoon department on me. Along ers. The idea of not building monuments with George Bannon, I was its last was very strong among idealistic people. [ Born April 22, 1937 in Manhattan's employee; I remember wrapping up all knew film deteriorated. Through all Bellevue Hospital and raised in Neptune, the drawings for storage. During the these permutations and youthful poetry, I New Jersey, Nicholson has become the interim between jobs, I,got a part in a play came to believe that the film actor was the risk-taker of his time. \"He's a very great downtown. At the time, the only profes- great \"Iiterateur\" of his time. [ think I actor,\" commented John Foreman, pro- sional theaters in L.A. were road com- know what I meant. ... ducer of Prizzi 's Honor, in which panies, but there were a lot of little Nicholson both looks and talks funny. theaters where you were paid about $20 a The quality of acting in L.A. theater \"The bravest, I would say. He has gone week. However, in this theater there were then was very high because of the tre- from being admired to liked, to appre- too many seats and it couldn't come mendous number of actors who were fly- ciated and celebrated, to beloved. He is under a little-theater contract, so I was ing back and forth between the East now beloved. He is prepared to do what- paid $75 a week. Coast and Hollywood. You could see any- ever the part requires, and anything he body-anybody who wasn't a star-in does becomes in itself interesting.n While I was doing this, I got the lead in theaters with 80 seats. But it always both- my first movie, Cry Baby Killer. Jeff rec- ered me when people came off stage and -B.W. ommended me. I read for it just like every were told how great they were. They Tell me about your beginnings. other actor in town. I screamed and weren't, really, in my opinion. It was then yelled - I know I gave the loudest read- I started thinking that, contrary to con- I got out of high school a year early, and ing, if not the best. And when I got the ventional wisdom, film was the artful though I could've worked my way part I thought: \"This is it! I'm made for medium for the actor, not the stage. through college, I decided I didn't \"\"ant to this profession.\" Then I didn't work for a do that. I came to California where my year. The stage has a certain discipline. But only other relatives were; and since I the ultimate standard is more exacting in wanted to see movie stars, I got a job at Still, it seems that you didn't have too film, because you have to see yourself- MGM, as an office boy in the cartoon pro- difficult a time getting started. and you are your own toughest critic. [ gram. For a couple of years I saw movie did not want to be coming off the stage at stars , and then AI Triscone and Bill But what I'm talking about covers a the mercy of what somebody else told me Hanna nudged me into their talent pro- three-year period. For the next few years I did. gram. From there I went to the Players I got a couple or three jobs a year, mostly Ring Theatre, one of the few little the- with Roger Corman, and one or two TV Did you develop any concise image of aters in L.A. at the time. I went to one shows. My problem in those days was yourself as an actor? Leading man? acting class taught by Joe Flynn before that I didn't get many interviews. I always Young character actor? And how did your Judson Taylor took me to Jeff Corey's got a very good percentage of the jobs I awareness ofyourselfas a potential com- class. went up for, but the opportunities were mercial commodity square with your few and far between. anti-structure bias? Up until then I hadn't cared about much but sports and girls and looking at sIt been said that you gave yourselften [ never thought in terms of typing my- movies - stuff you do when you're 17 or self, because [ wasn't that successful. 18. But Jeff Corey's method of working years to become a star. Is that true? After an actor has done a few pieces of opened me up to a whole area of study. No. Corey taught that good actors were work, his naivete is the part of the craft he Acting is life study and Corey's classes got has to nurture most. You don't want to me into looking at life as - I'm still hesi- meant to absorb life, and that's what I was know it all as an actor because you'll be tant to say - an artist. They opened up trying to do. This was the era of the Beat flat. As a means of supporting that experi- people, literature. I met Robert Towne, Generation and West Coast jazz and stay- ential element in film, once [ begin to ICarolel Eastman, 1I0hni Shaner, and ing up all night on Venice Beach. That work on a particular movie I consider loads of people I still work with. From was as important as getting jobs, or so it myself to be the tool of the director. that point on, I have mainly been inter- seemed at the time. I don't reckon it has ested in acting. I think it's a great job, a changed today - but I don't know, At about that same time, [ had started fine way to live your life. because I don't go to classes much. writing-first with Don Devlin and then with Monte Hellman. I thought of myself And all this while you were in the car- At the beginning, you're very idealisti- as part of the general filmmaking effort. toon department. Can you draw? cally inclined toward the art of the thing. And as my scope broadened, I began to Or you don't stick because there's no think about directing. I wanted to be the I was invited to join the MGM cartoon money in it. And I've always understood guy who got to say whether the dress is department. But if I'd started work in ani- money; it's not a big mystical thing to me. I say this by way of underlining that it was then and is still the art of acting that is the wellspring for me. In that theoretical period of my life I 54

red or blue. I'd till like to make t hose ulti- Nicholson with Anjelica Huston . mate dcci io n . It's like actio n pai nting. It's not a q ues tio n of right o r wro ng abo ut successful m ov ie right the n . Because of Rider, [ directed Drive, He Said. red o r blue , but th at o nl y o ne guy get to my bac kground with Roger Corm an, [ But at Cannes my thinking changed. ay it - a nd if o u d o n't ge t to , yo u're knew that my las t motorcycle movie had do ing so me thing else. T he craft of acting do ne $6 to $8 millio n fro m a budget of I'd been th e re before and I unde rstood inte rfa e with thi s idea . less th a n half-a-milli o n . [ th o ught th e the audie nce and its re lative amplitudes. [ mo me nt fo r th e bike r film had co me, be lieve I'm o ne of the few people sitting A an actO r, [ wa nt to g ive in to the co l- espec ia ll y if the ge nre was m oved o ne in th at audie nce who und e rstood what labo rati o n with th e directo r beca u e [ step away from expl o itati o n toward so me was happe ning. I th ought , \"T hi s is it. I'm do n't wa nt my wo rk to be all the same . kind of lite rary qu ality. Afte r all , [ was back into acting now. I'm a mov ie star.\" Th e mo re thi ca n be do ne with co mfort , writing a script [Head[ based o n the the- the mo re va rie ty my work has had . [ think ories of Marshall McLuh an, so [ under- You really said that to yourself: \"I'm a thi is inhe re nt to the actors' craft. [t is a s t oo d wh a t th e re lease o f hy brid movie star. \" chosen th eo re ti cal po int of departure. co mmuni ca ti o ns e ne rgy mi g ht m ea n. Th is was o ne of a dozen theore tical di s- Ye p . It was prim aril y because of the That S a very European attitude. cussio ns I'd have every d ay because thi s audie nce's res po nse. T h at's wh o I've wo rked w ith m o re was a very vital time fo r me and my co n- Europea n directors th an the ave rage acto r te mp orafl es. How did it f eel to wake up the next has. They o me how unde rstand th at thi s morning and know definitively that your i whe re [ am co ming from. And ['m not Did you think it would make you a life had changed-in terms of financial do ing it to get e mployme nt. I'm do ing it star ? security, creative and other life options? beca use [ju st kn ow th at ame ness, re pe- titio n, and co nceptu ali z ing are the acting Wh e n I saw Easy Rider [ th ought it was [t didn't happe n quite th at way - in o ne c raft ' ad ve rsa ri e , and it see ms m o re very good , and I as ke d D e nni s and Be rt big zap . Becau se of Bob's and Be rt's inte r- inte lligent to start off within a framewo rk [Schne ide r[ if [ could clea n up my own es t in m e as a direc tor, [ fe lt o n a bi g whe re th o e things are, to so me degree, p e rfo rm a nce e dit o ri a ll y, w hi c h th ey up swing before I arri ved in Ca nn es. The take n out of yo ur ha nd s. T hat d oes n't gracefull y allowed me to do . I th ought it screening the re was part of a feel ing that mea n [ do n't exerc ise my own tas te, crite- was so me of my best wo rk by far, but it things were go ing well for me. Oh , [ got ri a, a nd form s of se lf-cen so rs hip ; but was n't until the screening at the Ca nnes an e no rm o us ru sh in the theate r. [t was th ose el e me nt have to d o w ith who [ Film Festi val that I had an inkling of its what yo u could call an unca nny expe ri- choose to wo rk with , o n what and how it powerful super-stru ctural effect up o n the e nce, a ca taclys mi c m o me nt. But yo u relates to the mome nt [ start and fini sh. public . [n fact , up to th at mo me nt I had must unde rstand th at D e nnis was the re, All th ose factors com e intO pl ay, but they been thinking m ore abo ut directing, and [ Pe te r was th e re. We were in th e b oa t co me into pl ay bef ore the actio n of acting. had a commitme nt fro m Be rt and Bob to tO ge th e r, so [ didn't fee l th e s uccess On ce yo u've starte d a film yo u d o n't do o ne of several things I was intereste d pointed so si ngularl y at myself. be co me a wet noodle . You mu st have th at in . Which I did . Immedi ate ly afte r Easy co nfli ctu al inte rface because yo u do n't So I didn't wake up saying, \"Gee, my kn ow, and th ey do n't kn ow. It's through life is go ing to be diffe re nt.\" [ still do n't co nflict th at yo u co me o ut with so me- wake up th at way. I do n't leap too eas ily to thing that might be diffe re nt , be tte r th an res ults. I'm very suspic io us and wary in e ithe r of yo u th ought to begin with. The re is one thing [ know about cre- ati ve co nflict: once my argum e nt is ex- hauste d , [ am not go ing to be unh appy - whe the r it moves in my direction or away. Th at's what the stru cture does for yo u . [n the re al wo rld there's an afte r-effect of dis- appo intme nt if you lose an argu me nt. But if, to begin with , yo u're set up not to have this particular autono my, the n yo u're not disappo inted . [ have never felt brutalized as an actor. M a ny ac tor s d o, so m e tim es, but I've neve r had th at ex pe ri e nce. [f ['m no t happy with the balance, [ just wo n't work with th at pe rso n again. • You obviously saw Easy Ride r before knowing the critical and public response. Did you have any clue it would become such a bombshell ? Yes, a clue . Bob [Rafel son[ and [ were involved in writing Head when D e nni s [Hopper] and Peter [Fondal brought in a twelve-page treatment. I felt it wo uld be a 55

my way, and still get stung by people who dall Patrick McMurphy. to make what I wanted to make and I feel I shouldn't even be working. I always didn't care what lie I had to tell. The two expect something horrible next. • westerns Monte and I made [The Shoot- ing and Ride in the Whirlwind), for exam- Would you care to speculate what Since Easy Rider by what criteria do ple. Roger Corman only financed them about you the public responded to? you select projects? because we cheated him, in a way. We told him that one of them was a kind of It's hard for me to know. I wasn't a babe I look for a director with a script he western African Queen and the other a in the woods. I'd watched a lot of stars, likes a lot, but I'm probably after the variation on Fort Apache. But, what we from James Dean to Brando , and I'd seen directors more than anything. Because of delivered him were two very austere New everybody alive work at MGM. I had a cer- the way the business is structured today, I Wave westerns, and he knew it. Fortu- tain old-timer's quality, even though I was have sometimes turned down scripts that nately, the budgets were such that he yo ung and new, and drew on what I I might otherwise have accepted had I knew he couldn't lose more than he'd believed before I made it. known who was directing them. Witness , already paid for the scripts. for example. You've got to be good at it, number one, You had to be a little bit of a pirate in and sustain it. There are no accidents. You've taken more risks with subject those days. Any kind of sustained ability to go on matter, supporting roles, or directors working is because something is valid in than any American star of recent mem- The movies were very well received. the way you work. The star part is the ory. Is the director central in your taking They were good for Monte's reputation commercial side of the business - and, risk ? and they took me to Europe, where I met frankly, no one knows anything about Godard and Rivette and all those other that. The economic side is really statisti- Yes. There are many directors in the New Wave people. I think I was 26 at the cal. It's not based on the fact they think middle range who've made mostly suc- time. I went to Paris on Fred Roos' credit yo u're going to do something good; it's cessful pictures , and then there are a few card, with $400 cash. I was in five coun- because their economics tell them this is great directors who've had some suc- tries in seven months on that $400. a very good capital venture investment. cesses and some failures. I suppose my life would be smoother if I wasn't almost What did you do during those seven From a Jungian concept ofarchetypes, totally enamored of the latter category. months? why is it that certain people become icons My choice pattern hasn't really changed. for their culture? There were Hopper and Rafelson and, I hung around Pierre Cottrell's house. before them, Monte Hellman and Roger He took me to every cinema thing in I believe that part of the entire theatri- Corman. Of course, in that period I had Paris, every film festival around. I met cal enterprise is to undermine institu- no choice; these are the people who just about everyone in Europe who had tions . What did I know? I went from Easy wanted me. anything to do with movies through Cot- Rider, where I played a Southerner effec- trell- Barbet Schroeder, Nestor Almen- tively enough for a lot of people to think I You've definitely been in the vanguard dros, Richard Roud... . was a Southerner, to Five Easy Pieces, ofpeople interested in seriousfilms ,films where the guy pretends to be a South- What year was that? erner in the first half but in fact turns out that made statements. If you'd been in I don't remember. It was the year Pier- to he from a sophisticated classical-music rot Ie Fou was released (1965). famil y. New York in the Fifties , instead of out Well, the late Sixties was a great period here, your interest in European cinema in movies. That is when I first became The other part of the answer is that I and existentialist angst wouldn't have involved infilm myself, at Lincoln Center am reflective of an earlier audience who been so unusual. Where do you think and the New York Film Festival. I never didn't find the movie conventions of their your taste came from, and how did it dreamt it would change. time entertaining any longer-who , develop ? Boy, did it change. It's a pity. What frankl y, found them quite repressive. seems to have happened is \"they\" started These same conventions were shortly I imagine that somewhere out in producing the student filmmaker. This, thereafter flung off by the society as a America right now is a guy lookin' at mov- anyway, is what my begrudging nature whole. And once you're rolling, you stay ies and saying: \"I can't believe this shit. tells me. The problem was that \"they\" right there in a surf-ride on that sociologi- I'm in high school. I don't have any of were a little bit too green. At first \"they\" cal curve. The minute your theoretical these fuckin' lame-o parties and a bunch made interesting pictures which didn't meanderings aren't valid, your work won't of lame-o bullshit. I got serious things to make any money so \"they\" abandoned do in my life. Why are they making these 'em for blockbuster city. Then a few years be well received. movies? All right, if it's a dog picture, but passed, and Steven Spielberg arrived like For an actor, style comes last. You first don't pretend to be makin' this shit about the final evolution. Filmmaking always me:' That's where I think taste starts to changes. He is the top of the mountain of have to implement the whole thing, but that particular thing, and that's good for your style comes from the subconscious, get formed. The desire ... me. For instance, the only script Steve which is the best part an actor brings to ... not to be insulted. and I have talked about is a very human his work. These conscious ideas are only Right. As far as European movies are story. I figure that anybody who's not a the springboard for what you hope will be puppet and who's left standing in three or the real meat from the unconscious. concerned, Monte Hellman educated me four years is going to be in a very good a lot. The only European film s that were position. I see where characters I've played are distributed out here were movies like Bit- What do you mean by \"anybody that's influencing the culture we live in. Henry ter Rice, Umberto D., Seven Samurai, not a puppet\"? Miller wrote an essay called \"On Seeing Rififi at the Beverly Canon. Monte and You know, all the those movies with lit- Jack Nicholson for the First Time\" about B.]. Merhols, and a guy named Freddie tle herpes monsters, and wingdings, bur- my character in Five Easy Pieces. I Engleberg who ran the Unicorn, one of believe Jules Pfeiffer's writing for Carnal L.A.'s first coffee houses , and another Knowledge was very influential. And half guy named John Fless, whom I haven't the people in the world still call me Ran- heard much of since, formed one of the first film clubs. There was a period when I just wanted S6

ie d trea ure, ca rs th at talk , je ll o fro m Getting along with John Huston. eve ry orifice, and so forth . c iga re tte . Di sc uss io ns of my directing ing with two e le me nts of he r choos ing: a Don't you think we're moving out of always get me into trouble . I e ith e r have a heart and a ho use . T he wildest one in the that phase? fi st fi ght or a heart attack . boo k was m ade by Steven Spielbe rg, and it shows exactly why he's a great m ov ie T hat's what I'm tr yin' to ay. A few Do you enjoy directing? director. Thi s is what he drew: a big paper yea r from now, if yo u ca n still portray a I love it. heart as if it were o n a hoop , bu sted ope n , hum an be ing, yo u'll be quite a valuable Why? through which was co ming a car pulling a co mm o dit y. I inte nd to be t he re . It's Let me put it this way: Both as an actor traile r ho me be hind it. M otio n . .. move- whe re my hopes as a director lie . and a viewer, what I loo k fo r in a director me nt . .. explosio n are all th e re in th at one and a mov ie is vision . I was n't mad about little Rorschac h of a drawing. Everybody You 've wo rked more frequen.tly with Ro man's IPo la nski] Pirates sc ript , but in tow n's in that book. If I were the head Bob Rafelson than any oth er director. because it's Rom an I know it's go ing to be of a studi o and I loo ke d thro ugh th e What is it about your relationship that a grea t m ovie. Ro m an is to p fi ve; th e book , I'd stop right the re and say, ''This keeps you both perking? same for Stanley IKubrick] as well as Jo hn boy here is a movie director.\" Hu sto n . Th e im agery of a m ov ie is whe re Th e rel atio nship falls into the realm of it's at, and th at is based upo n the direc- S o w hy d o I wa nt to direc t ? We ll , I the exceptio nal. Bob and I tart fro m th e tor's visio n. think I have spec ial visio n. If yo u ask any- same po int , but th e re are more co ntradic- Everybody's always talkin g abo ut b ody w h o was in co ll ege d urin g th e tio ns be tween us th an be twee n myse lf script. In actuality, cine m a is th at \"other pe ri od of Drive, He Said, they'll te ll yo u it and anyone e lse I've me ntio ne d . S ince we thing\"; and unless yo u're afte r th at , I'd was it was the pee r-group picture of the started off writing togethe r, we know each ju st as soo n be il1 the diffe re nt medium . If time . But it cost me because it was very othe r very very well , and the re is no othe r it's all go ing to be about script , let it be a c riti cal of yo uth . I did not pand e r to directo r w ith whom I have so many co n- pl ay. th e m. I didn't say, \"Oh , m arc h d irec tl y fli c ts whe n we're workin g. During any Th e q uality of a scene is d iffere nt if it's fro m here to the center of power and rake given movie both of us will say, \"This is it. set in a ph o ne booth or in an ice house over the universe :' D o n't suppress yo ur No more.\" and th e director has got to know whe n he feelings but do n't blow smo ke up its ass, wa nt o ne or th e othe r. Scenes are differ- so-to-sp ea k . But I really like working with him. The e nt whe n the camera sits st ill or if it's run- guy is ve ry caring, co mmitte d , dri ve n, nin g o n a tr ain . A ll th ese thin gs a re I'm very proud of my two m ovies , and I and ultimatel y very very smart . H e's a sin- indigeno us to the fo rm . think th ey have so me thi ng special. O th- gul ar movie make r, and to me th at's the T he re's so meo ne I know who keeps a e rw ise , I have nothing to offe r. I do n't best thing anybody ca n be. I like be ing book of drawings made by guests to he r wa nt to direct a movie as good as Anto- part of th at. We seem to make inte resting home. S he as k everyone to make a draw- nio ni , or Kubrick , or Po lanski , or who- stuff togeth e r. Am o ng o the r things, we ever. I wa nt it to be my own . I th ink I've both care a lot about whimsy. I do n't like his having rathe r a rougher road than I have . Th ere is no reaso n for it. It co mes down to sryle . I'm more abras ive than he is whe n we're working togethe r; but o utside that framework , he does n't make an adju stme nt. That is such a false standard to judge creati ve tale nt by. Yo u might as well judge the m by what they eat. Th e man has made a certain numbe r of movies whic h have bee n eco no mica lly feasible. If yo u ran a q uesti o n through thi s indu s tr y ab o ut Th e Postman. Alwa ys Rings Twice, most people wo uld surmise that it wasn't successful. Th at is not true. I know it m ade mo ney, because I received overages , so it must've grossed about as much as Chinatown and much m ore th an Carnal Knowledge . But people are anx- ious to disqualify it. I am real, real close to him . And I'd be doing him a disservice if I pre te nde d to und e rstand Ihi s ca reer diffi c ulti es ]. I think he's that inte resting. Th ese things have a rh thm . Bob's bee n wo rkin g all thi s tim e, a nd we' ll pr o b a bl y m a ke another movie togethe r at so me po int. • I 'd like to talk about you as a director. INicholson rises and starts to move away. ]Are you leaving the room ? ILaughing ] N o, I'm just go ing to get a 57

got the seed of it and, what's more, that I But I can't guarantee how much money directors are generally smart enough to incorporate a star into their own vision? can make movies that are different and a movie based on any of that source mate- Yes. The people I work with are informed by my taste. Since that's what rial would make, and you can't mortgage auteurs in the sense that if they want something a certain way, they'll get it. I I'm looking for when I'm in the other seat, your life for favors just to make one don't argue with them past a certain point. But I feel it's my job to attempt to I wonder why others aren't. ... Well, obvi- movie. I can't go out there and say, influence their thinking. OK, the director makes the movie. But some movies can't ously because I make 'em a lot of money \"Look, Barry... or Sid ... or Guy:' These get made without someone like me in them. You can't call yourself an auteur if as an actor. men are friends of mine, smart, and I've you want Robert Duvall for a part but you wind up with Jeff Goldblum. In that Have you had opportunities to direct if got nothing to say against them. I believe sense, Pirandello has begun to rule your life. the movie included your starring in it? in making all movies at their most reason- Looking over all of it, the single most Yes , but I don't want to be scattered. I able. That I get a lot of money as an actor obvious thing to me, in all we read and all we write about films, is this: people fear prefer to approach a film full-scale. Take is because nobody else will get it if I don't. the creative moment. That's why they talk so long about a given scene. But the Moon Trap as an example. It's a western It will not be ploughed into another creative moment is happening when the camera is turned on, and stops when it's I've always wanted to make, and I still movie. That money is better off with me. turned off. First time ... this time ... only now... never again to be that way again. will, some day. When I started the [Laughing] That's it. screenplay - and that's nearly ten years I don't want to make a better \"alien\" One person cannot be in charge of all that. The director says when to turn on ago now - I said to the production com- movie. If I did, it would probably reflect the camera, whether to do another take, and he selects which of the moments he pany involved: \"Don't make me spend my the period we're so fond of. I'd do it thinks is worthwhile. From a collage point of view, he is primary. Bernardo summer writing if the only way you'll Alphaville-style: Take out all the art [Bertolucci] and I heard this argued once, at seven in the morning, by Pasolini and a make the movie is with me in it.\" direction and mix in a little Krapp's Last man who was head of film at the Sor- bonne. The argument was this: In film There are two parts in the picture, and Tape. syntax, what is the basic unit, the shot or the content of the shot? they wanted me to play the younger part, In three or four years I can make the In that sense, you can't separate out the which I felt a little too old for. But more kind of movies I want to make. I'll still feel actor. With Michelangelo [Antonioni], the actor is moving space. If he wants to than that, I had a list of people I wanted to a little like a pirate. The center's always in be straight, Michelangelo will tell you up front that the actor is not the most impor- play that part. Jon Voight was on it, and the middle, but the studios will be a little tant thing in his movies. The actor informs the rest of the image, but it is the Dennis, also John Travolta before he'd bit less in that center lane than they are entire image which interests Antonioni. Another director might say that it's only made a movie, and Tommy Lee Jones, now. the moment when somebody touches their lip, or one hair is sticking out of Richard Gere, and Freddie Forrest. Prizzi's Honor must find the adult place in a love scene. George C. Scott and Lee Marvin both audience this summer. I looked at what's I always try to get into whatever mold a director has in mind, but in all honesty, in said they'd play the older part. But the being released around the same time. the real action of it, they don't know. They want you to deliver \"it:' They hire studio wouldn't go for it so I dropped the There's something about discovered someone like myself because they hope I'll do something beyond whatever they project. But since I own the material and pirate treasure, gnomes, reporters who have in mind. Bring something they didn't write. They've created everything up to I'm getting close enough to play the older keep old typewriters and pretend they're that moment when they turn on the cam- era-the clothes, the day, the time-but part, I may still get to make it. beach bums. There is all this stuff which I when that rolls they're totally at the mercy of the actor. Did you write the script yourself? call an offshoot of student humor and pre- Many auteurs are more fascinated by Alan Sharp came in after me and occupation. Something has got to give. individual stars. They sense something in the star they want to use, like a color on a improved it. People don't go on liking the same things. Have you been doing any other writing Skirrs go up and skirts go down. in recent years? The last credit I see on That's why I went with Terms of your filmography isfor Head. Endearment. It was the most human I've contributed to other things, such as script I'd read in years, and I just knew it Gain' South and the scene on the bluff would be successful. Why? Product dif- with my father in Five Easy Pieces . I love ference. To a studio executive who's in a writing, but I stopped because I felt I was more intense flow, product difference more effective approaching filmmaking. looks like danger. But to someone like from a different vantage point. At this myself who is one step removed, that's moment, I suppose I can do more for a what you're looking for. script as an actor than as a writer- in the That wave is going to break, believe film sense. I wrote right up to Easy Rider, me. A lot of good things will get made at which time I became someone who that haven't been done yet. could add fuel to a project as an actor. I've So we shouldn't expect to see you always approached film as a unit, but you behind the camera in the next few years? have to work your own field. Let me put it this way: I'm available to Jack, will you not direct again until direct almost anything. But, to be honest, you can do what you want, your way? I don't get a lot of offers. The funny thing There's nothing I'd like more creatively is when I'm asked, it's invariably by than to make a film on, say, the tone of another director. Bogdanovich offered My Old Sweetheart by Susannah Moore. me a project once, and Francis [Coppola] It's a tremendous first novel by someone and Fred [Roos] wanted me to do On the I've known forever. If this were the period Road. There are offers that are here one we keep talking about-the late Sixties, day and, because I'm not immediately early Seventies -I could scheme that enthusi'astic, are gone the next. I respect movie onto the screen. That , or Lie those guys for even thinking about me Down in Darkness, or Henderson the because they don't have to. Rain King. Do you feel the more auteur-oriented 58

palette. With Kathleen Turner. Oh, have I found that out! And I'll tell famil y. John Huston and John Foreman ship with John Huston is co ncerned , we you why: bec:lU e a tar i not a manipu- have been close for years, and I've been have always gotten along very well. I don't lated image. Nobody can prove that bet- Anjelica's boyfriend for quite a while. I know anybody who's as well loved as John ter than I. Only that audience out there, knew John Huston even before I knew Huston. It's quite a phenomenal thing to that audience which I'm not a terribl y Anjelica, and I always wanted to work see. Teamsters stand up when he walks affectionate per on toward, as you know, with him; we'd talked intermittently by. They're proud to be called \"s hiny make a tar. It' up to them . You ca n't do about different projects. pants\" because they never get off their anything about it , or I never would've got asses, so the fact they stand up is a singu- anywhere. tar would all be Louis B. How did it all work out, finally ? lar comp liment. Mayer' cou in if ou could make 'em up. It jumped into gear pretty early on, and it was fun. I have been silently hoping for Once you started working with him , And that' what those director love , Anjelica's success as an actress, and I'm were there any surprises? because they've tudied or written every very happy that it is beginning in a picture type of cene from every angle. I've been we worked on together. Prizzi should be a The biggest surprise is that he's totally over eery goddamned type of scene, career-maker for her; she is flawless in it. unique . I knew a lot and I'd heard a lot but either by m elf or with omebody, and I And in the real world, it was a big deal for I wasn't ready for \"total unique .~ It's in the don't want to make a nice movie that's like her and John to work so successfully way he commands a set, the economy of a great play. I want to make \"that other together. There was a lot of grit between his shooting, how he approaches the thing.\" Rafelson' shooting the goodbye them on the subject of A Walk With Love work, what he's after, how sure he is of cene ; the wind blows , and a bird flies and Death. They seemed to have had twO what he's aher. I did more one-takes on through . It's the odde t thing of all time. separate experiences, equally baffling to this picture than anything since my Roger Not planned. The audience may not real- both of them . But it was obvious how Corman days ! ize it consciously, but so mehow they exhilarated John was by the material and know that is what made the scene right. by how much she has grown as an actress. John camera cuts. If you only do one The written scene is \"I love you.\" The She reacted to that, of course, so it did take yo u don't reall know what yo u did . give the experience a specia l qua lity. You don't get to refine it. You come home bird is on his own. Did the filmmaking affect the intimacy and think of the 35 things yo u might've When I wa young, I was even further among all ofyou ? thrown in the s tew. When a director Anjelica and I decided to have separate shoots several takes, yo u eventually find out. I wa ready to make a movie about apartments in New York - \\ hich is what his rh thm and try to co me up to the boil door opening and closing for twO hours . we do in real life , too. It was just a profes- together. But with John Hu ton e ery- Sometimes I wanted to stand up and sional thing: different hours, calls, places body's gOt to be ready to go right away. shout, \"Didn't you hear Godard? All you to throw your notes. As far as my relation- But there were never any problems. want to talk about is story. You think that's Everyone ha such respect for him that it .\" no one want to be the fl y-in-the-o int- Before I moved into the mainstream of American movies , I wrote a script as an experiment. I wanted to get very far away from the cliches about the three-act play - structure, development. I refused to think about it except when I was sitting at the typewriter. I wanted every day to inform the script. The end came when I had written 94 pages , which I considered the magic number in those days. What was the script like? Great! What happened to it? I don't know, I lost track of it. Last year, somebody tried to buy the first cript I ever wrote for a lot of money, but I couldn't find a copy of it either. • Prizzi's Honor was something ofa fam- ilyaffair. Did you have any qualms about doing it? I had trepidations. I' e always tried to do what was best and not what was con- venient. The pre-picture anxieties were very intense becau e the deal was diffi- cult to make and the diplomacy of the sit- uation quite comp licated. But once it got rolling, it definitely had the flavor of a family project. That doesn't necessarily mean that it informs the doing of the film - other than that Prizzi i about a 59

ment, so to speak. both do and don't regret that decision, you later, kids:' And he was gone. That Richard Condon's novel verges on the but I know it was right. Al Pacino was the was it for Brooklynese until we were all perfect actor for it and the picture's better out in Brooklyn, makin' the movie, look- surrealistic. How did you approach it? because of him. But now a little time has ing and listening. When you use a dialect, Initially, I did not understand it. I did passed and it's not so militant, so I you worry that the people you're imitating thought I could get away with playing an will think you're making fun of them. But not know it was a comedy the first few Italian. And the lip curl and accent really we eventually got it together. times through, including having read the gave me as much of a feeling of being a novel. I thought the jokes were what different nationality as it aided the come- Can you compare Prizzi's Honor with needed to be rewritten, and I kept saying, dic aspect. anything else you've done? \"John, this is gonna get a laugh, y'know:' Then he said [perfectly imitating Hus- How did the accent evolve ? Nothing. The closest would be to pic- ton's speech\\, ''Well, you know it's a com- One day in New York, Anjelica and I tures where I've been extreme, such as edy:' Once I got that straightened out, I were huddled in our hotel room when Goin' South, The King of Marvin Gar- got going. John called. \"Kids , I've found some won- dens, and maybe The Missouri Breaks. derful stuff; I'll be right over:' And he These movies haven't always gone down What kind of dialogue did you have too well with the public but, oddly, I think with Huston about your character, Char- shortly came running in and said, \"Have they're what is most successful about my ley Partanna ? you ever heard true Brooklynese?\" I told career as a whole. Many actors will try him I thought I had but I wasn't sure, and something different once, but if it isn't a I was down in Puerto Vallarta for a week he said, \"I'm not sure you have either. boxoffice success they'll never do it again. but about all we did was watch the boxing Wdve all got to go back to school for this In my opinion, therds no point in going matches on the Olympics twelve hours a picture. This is the way we're all going to on with this job if you do the same thing day. The business talk was very brief. talk, this is what wdve been looking for:' over and over again. I feel very lucky After I found out it was a comedy, I went because I don't think there's any part I back to my room and read it over a few He brought in Julie Bavasso and told can't play. There are parts that scare me more times, and then came back and this her to read us some ofthe script-which more than others.... is what he said to me: \"It seems, Jack, she did and left. John was enthralled. that everything you've done until now has \"Marvelous, wasn't it, marvelous :' Then Didn't Charley Partanna scare you a been intelligent. We can't have any of that he stood up and went over to the window little? in this film . And I've got an idea, I hesitate and looked out on Central Park and said, to say what it is, but something to let peo- \"Oh, look at the city here. It's one of the Only in the sense that I'm used to ple know immediately that Prizzi's world's beautiful sights, isn't it? Well, see working within a very informed team Honor is .. .different ... from anything else concept. Having come in so dumb, I was you've done. I hesitate to say it, but I worried. What John said that finally think you should wear a wig:' brought me around was \"I always hesitate to say this, Jack, but I think we have a Now I've got comedy. .. and dumb . .. chance here to do something different.\" and a wig to deal with. I went to bed. When John Huston says something like that under the weeds in Mexico, well .... What kind ofwig did he have in mind? A bad one. I've never worn a wig except After you've made a movie or two, and in Carnal Knowledge for the teenage you're over the feeling that you're hanging stuff, but I've always thought of it as an onto something ephemeral by your fin- aging device rather than the reverse. If gernails, the fun of doing it is in the differ- you do it just a little wrong, it makes you ence of it. I've always been a smart-aleck look older. So, while I was ready to wear filmmaker. From 'way too early on, I this wig John had in mind , I was defi- thought I knew everything, so the nitely searching for something else to make the same point. opaqueness of Prizzi s Honor took me by Some friends of mine who grew up in Brooklyn took John and me out and surprise. But I used it. I put my not about in the \"environment\" there, and understanding the material together with one day I came up with this little the character's dumbness into a kind of device ... [curls his lips as he does dynamic on how to play him . I let the throughout the film) .. .which helped me character's limitations keep me happy. talk funny, too. [He launches into a pro- nounced Brooklyn accent.) One small For example, I did not want to know thing like that can give you the spine of a what period the film was set in and I didn't character. try for the same kind of dialogue with Uizs it an actual prosthetic device! John that I do with other directors. When No . I'm not going to tell you how I did you bring him an idea, he doesn't say he it! One day in the limo I tried it out on don't like it. He just goes [big tooth- him and he said, 'Oh, that's fine , no wig: gnashing grimace) ... and that's all he has I noticed that Sicilians and Italians to do. You never bring up the idea again. don't move their upper lips much when You drift off like smoke. they speak. I was mainly worried about playing an Italian. I turned down the orig- So I said to myself, \"Okay, I've got one inal Godfather because I thought it of the most commanding people I've ever should've been played by an Italian . I kown with his' hand on the helm; the pro- ducer's an old friend of mine; I'll just do my own simple job like a dummy and that's it:' 60

What do you think Huston meant when approac h . &>Iec led as an oul slandlng him 01 Ine yea l he used the word \"different \" in relation London Film FellI••1 to Prizzi' H o no r ? Robert alway tea e me becau se I 19 We're in a ti me whe n high co ncept is wa nt to ca ll it a triptych rathe r than a tril- A FILM BY RICK SCHMIDT king and Prizzi S Honor i nO[ about high ogy because I always wanted the movie _OUl rageou s. percepllve Unlike Ihe malenal 110m wn,ch ,I bortows, 1988 slnps away Ihe s\"uclUre olliS lantasles. leaVing oncept. It' about aile and place that to stand o n th e ir own , yet be ab le to be Ina audience as well as Ihe perlormers naked and vulnerable peopl e have n't go ne before. I think it's very revealing of the milieu th at it' abo ut. seen as a gro up . And he does too. But he Linda Gross After all, Italian are funn y people. But L.A. Times teases me becau e I use a painting rathe r yo u don't wa nt to gamble with the m a lot ; 1988 In liS cumulallve pleposlerou s f1ummelY IS a splnled oulcry they ca n also be dark. I do n't know any th an a lite rary te rm . lor people 10 Ihrow offlhe over! and cover! lorms 01 oppression profess ional gang ter , but I would imag- ine they'd find Prizzi mo t e ntertaining. Triptych is also non -linear. . .. and be themselves, An outrageous tour· de·force. As yo u know, I'm a big p eer-group Vic Skolnick pleaser. They may be able to look at it That's right. You can put o ne piece in and e njoy it, and that is what successful New Community Cinema satirical comedy is all about. A ia and the oth er in Brooklyn and peo- Rick Schmidt's 1988 lalls under Ihe avanl·garde calegory. bUI • ple don't even know th ey're part of a trip- bears enougn popular loucnas 10 make II W,lh a crossover Tell me about Two Jakes-is it a genu- or diptyc h or whatever. It' a big piece of ine sequel 10 Chinatown? audIence. VarIety writing. RT i a dear friend and whe never Not exactly: We always had the idea of Tne 111m raises queslions aboul explollallon . enler!alnmenl . three film in the back of our minds, but th e o pp o rtunit y a ri ses - a it did o n at the time of Chinatown's release 11974], POIIIICS. psychology, and Ihe nalure 01 Ihe medium Iisell sequels weren't a big part of the industry. Chinato wn and Th e Last Detail- we're Michael Blowen The first tory began in 1937 - which is the year of my birth - and follows my in spired to work together. And th at's th e Boston Evening Globe character eleven years later after he's been through the war. That's 1948 ; and the fun of it; th at's part of the fun of laSTing. Wilh Ih,s film Ihe \"adilion 01 Ihe Independent clnema's mock· third story finishes off at about the time Robert ITownel and I actually met. You ha e to do every m ov ie one at a Hollywood humor IS turned inSide out. In other words, it's a literary contriv- time. Trilogy is co ntrary to thi s ideology. B. Ruby Rich ance; an 18-year project. We wanted to do a project whereby you waited the real My ni g htm are is to wa ke up a nd find FESTIVALS: ROTTERDAM , FLORENCE, amount of time that passed between the US FILM , ADELAIDE , LONDON . stories before going forward. That's why myself th e host of a TV seri es - GE The- we never talked about a sequel; why we \" Ralhe r Inan hghl a lenglhy and cos ily couri baIlie afler an en· negotiated a contract wherein they atre, for in stan ce. counter wilh MGM 's ballery 01 lawyers . Richard Schmidl deCided couldn't make one without us - they 10 lake Ihe ba11le tnloa new lronl by adding a prologue 10 Ihe 111m ex· couldn't do a TV series. I don't have to What is the status of Mosquito Coas t ? plalnlng why sections of the sound track are missing and the gray my hair for Two Jakes because presence 01 an \" X\" over ceriaIn shols The 111m loses nOlhlng as a eleven years have passed and I played the I was co mmitted to it as lo ng as they part before and this is what I look like lesuli of hiS sell-censorshlp. In laci gains by Ihe addlilon 01 a eleven years later. Cinematically it works. wanted me to be co mmined , but th ey poillical dimenSion Ihereby dramallslng Ihe predlcamenl ollhe In· Statistically, people's careers don't last were n't able to put it into production for dependenl lilmmakel In Ihe InduslrY domlnaled him wOlld Thi S 18 years, so to plan an 18-year project is black sallie has all 01 a sudden acqUired a biling edge .. insane. But we're almost half-way there one reaso n or anothe r. now. The next one, to represent 1953 , Carmen Vigil which is just before Robert and I met , will And The Murder of Napoleon? S.F. Cinematheque be five years from now. They deal with I have a lo t of co llaborator s, but no Big Elements: air, land, water, fire. I'm 'I,\" The hIm has cal ved a unique niche for Itself somewhere between demi-collaborative in all of it. Bob's doing panners; [ work o n my own. I'm doing the writing- and he's definitel y in the \" FREAKS\" and Felilnl 's \" 8 II 's as Ihough someone forgol 10 running as the great screenwriter of our what is ca lled producer's work o n it. Bob lock Ihe sludlo door and LUIS Bunuel and William Burroughs sneak- time - but we're partners. I'm the vehicle. ed In and began a halchel Job on Hollywood \" The risk we take is that no one will want wanted to write and dire c t it but that to see the third movie. You gOt to have a David Harris little trust. e ffort has branched into Two Jakes. [ The Boston Phoenix Robert always wanted, as a literary have n't gone to a studio and sa id I'd like to 97 minutes, color/B&W, t6mm . 1978 trick, to create a new and original detec- tive character like someone from Ham- deve lop it , becau se I'm wo rking all the Rick Schmidt features (A Man, A Woman, And mett or Chandler. It kind of begs the A Killer, 1988-The Remake, and Emerald Cities) notion of a seque\\. And , for his part , as a time. And no one has asked me . I feel just now available in VHS/BETA video cassettes. native Californian, to tell the social his- like I did as an actOr early o n. I don't (201) 891-8240 L. 1(~ t-1 -T~ atory of the region. It's the roman clef Or write: understand v\"hy nobody is as king me to ~~ (~! DO.>( 31 5 Fr(Jn ~' lin l_oke:::: direct film s or to develop projects. ® J' J J ()7417 Filmog raphy Pri:z.; $ HOllor ( 1(84) Temls oj£lIdeamlenf (1983) Reds (19HI) 17.. Bord\" (198l) 111l' Posmwn Always Rings Twice (1980) Goill' SoU/II (19 78; . Iso direCted) 17.. SlIilling (1980) 17\" Missollri B\",aks (1976) Tommy (1975) n.. PossolIger(197S) sOne F/~v Over ,lte Cuckoo Nesl (1974) Chinalown (197 4) Thd.osl Detail (1973) 17\" King ofMan'in Gardells (1972) CArnal Knowl,dge (197 1) A Safe Place (1971) Ens,·Dri,·., He Said (1971 ; dire«cd Onll) Fi\"e Pieces (1970) On II CI;,ar Day 11)11 Can S.. Fom'\" 1(1969) Easy Rid\" (1969) H~ad (196 : 31so \\\\ rotc and co·produ ced \\\\ iet'! Bob Rafcl son) The Trip (1967) P;)'ch-Oul (1967) Rebel Rbus\"s (1%7) The 51. Wlltntifles Day Massncr~ (1967) Hell's AI/Edson Wheels (1967) 17.. Shooling (1965 ; co-produc<d \"ilh Monte l lellm,n) Ridt jn (h e WhirlwIlld (1965; also wrote and co-produced \\, ilh H ellman) Flight to Fury (It164; dlso \\\\ rOlC) Bo k 000\"0 H.II (1964) Ensign Pull'er (1%4) 1711l1uJ\" IslaI/o 1(1963) Th. Rb''''1/ (1%3) 17\" Ttrror (1%3) 17.. Bro~,\" Latul (196!) n..The LlIIl. Shop of Horrors (1%1) lVild Rid, (IQhO) Swds Lolligall (1960) Too Soon 10 LoW' (1960) 17.. Cry Baby Killerl( 19SH) 61

Postcard by Brendan Gill and insurance companies, which are far by Bill Landis from philanthropic by nature. and Jimmy McDonough The proposed redevelopment of 42nd Street might be more accurately The block in question is, at the present Sly Stone is singing on a tinny transis- described as the proposed destruction of moment, unquestionably squalid. It is tor radio. \"You can't leave cause your heart 42nd Street. One of the most celebrated the hangout, night and day, of teen-age is there ... But you can't stay cause you thoroughfares on earth, it is of the highest male hustlers and their pimps, of dope- been somewhere ...\" Deena sits in the architectural and historical interest along peddlers and addicts, of derelicts of both cashbox of a decaying Broadway bur- every inch of its not very considerable sexes and all ages. It is a gathering place lesque house . She argues with a cantank- length between the East River and the for misfits from every corner of the erous old fellow in stained clothing that Hudson. In the hypocritical name of United States, some harmless and some sports a copy of the T#ztchtower in one \"cleaning up\" a few hundred feet of this dangerous. It is an urban problem that pocket and a bottle of Thunderbird in the thoroughfare - the single block between can be controlled, but not eradicated, other. His name is Popeye and his breth- Seventh and Eighth avenues - the city whether in New York, Rome, Cairo, or ren are legion, roaming Times Square in and state have joined together to foster any other major city in the world. search of a porno fix day and night, never one of the biggest real-estate rip-offs of all satisfied. He won't cough up the seven time. Does anyone seriously believe that dollars admission. She shoos him out. putting up three or four colossal build- The envisioned 42nd Street is claimed ings, wholly out of scale with the neigh- Deena takes tickets and is the house to be for the benefit of all the citizens of borhood, is going to solve the problem? mother at this place. An older woman, New York, as well as for the benefit of the Are 4 million square feet of office space- jolly, on the the zaftig side, she has to 20 million tourists who visit the city every in great stone slabs blotting out sky, sun, work here because she got fired from a year and who, answering questionnaires, and air and turning Times Square into the straight art theater in the Village. Deena invariably respond that either \"Times shadowy bottom of a well- going to is very vocal about her weekend trips to Square\" or \"Broadway\" is the chief reason improve conditions that, in one sorry the Hellfire Club and her adventures with for their presence. But of course the proj- form or another, have been characteristic very young men who swing both ways. ect isn't really intended to make us feel of city life for a couple of thousand years? Her stories entertain everybody but safer and happier on that block. It is Is bad architecture-the wrong buildings annoy her kids, one of whom also works intended to put several hundred millions in the wrong place at the wrong time- at the house occasionally. of dollars in profits into the pockets of a going to perform a miracle that nobody in handful of individual real-estate develop- history has been able to perform? Massage parlors have vanished, thanks ers and, behind them, of several banks to the Board of Health and the vice . There are 15 or 20 theaters on the squad, so there are three ersatz burlesque block between Seventh and Eighth ave- (continued on page 66) 62

-- s,from 4 2 n d S t r e e tNaughty, Bawdy, Gaudy, Sporty-And Soon To Be A Major Mall & High-Rise houses around Times Square allowing and rejoined his unit. I wondered why the marines wrote - out of strict duty? to help women to do private sessions. Sandy is a by David Thomson the letter-writers who had so many bone-thin, 22-year-old mixed black and notices of death to convey? or because the corps knew that so many of their men no Puerto Rican girl with a college education Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro in Taxi longer wrote to their parents? Semper Fidelis. who works at Deena's place. In between Driver, 1976, directed by Martin And I wondered how to read the verse. I moth-eaten porno films and token strip- Scorsese) realized I did not know my son's mind well enough to judge whether this was affected ping, she lures old men into cubicles for I received it in June 1974, a postcard childishness, hostility, irony, scorn, disturbance or his true voice. Did he need $50 to $100 tips. The money goes to from New York City, a picture of money? Was that the point of the \"nickle\"? And why would he think I might be fickle? grass, up the basepipe, and to her' neo- Forty-second Street at night. The gaudy, Had his name ·really changed? What was his outsize pickle? The grim chant to the Superfly paramour, John T., whom she not exactly registered colors show neon verse jangled in my head , and I always saw his wolfish white grin. It was only later sometimes does live sex shows with. bubbles of pink and amber, the glaring that I understood the picture was part of the poem : the city and the cab, like White women who work t!-lese places are marquees like flesh beginning to rot, and Sodom and Gomorrah and their approaching thunderbolt. often heavy dope or coke users, bleached a sleek brimstone cab passing by. On the This was our second child, born on blonde, with tattoos like \"lC.\" back, there was a stamp of the American August 6, 1945, the day we dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima. Yet he was a \"Girls\" like Trudy also work the floor. flag, my name and address, and this source of peace. I still remember the day in 1946 when he lay in his cot, twitching in She may fool you at first sight, but watch poem, written in jagged black ink: a patch of sunlight, when I knew I could not leave him , and would stay with Mary out, fell as - there's a man under there. here comes a little fellow Frances and Nebraska because of that . Drag queens and transsexuals used to riding his bi-sickle My decision was made above him , but he line 42nd Street from Ninth Avenue to the Hudson River waterfront, tricking in and all his inside thoughts (continued on page 64) Caddies with Jersey plates. Now, they're are in an outsize pickle restricted to the Casa Dario, the area's remaining drag bar, and to a few dingy now, father of the family, hustler haunts . Trudy is now writing please don't be fickle Deena .lots of despondent letters from New Orleans. or else I'll come and tickle you - at least give a nickle to stout-hearted Travis Bickle Let's not forget Horace, burlesque The Bickle was written in red . employee for an eternity. Supposedly a It was the first we had heard from him barker, his trademark is incoherent since 1971 and the letter from the marines ramblings-low-rent Rufus Thomas. announcing that, after forty-seven days' Liz, a 28-year-old black woman, hus- captivity under the forces of North (continued on page 64) Vietnam, Pvt. Travis Bailey had escaped 63

THOMSON (continuedjrompage 63) her off. She looked at him as if he had deaths, and he was shot himself, sitting in slept on, his small fists clenching and unclenching at his dreams. I wondered if struck her. I only have plain words to tell blood when the police arrived. The my deliberation was just the drama of his sleep. I stayed. But in time the child left. you what happened. But we lived in a pictures were everywhere, with diagrams Travis was nine when Harry went off to madhouse, all of us unhealing wounds for of the house and one paragraph saying military school. It was a severe loss for him, for he revered his older brother- not each other. that Travis Bickle, once a Marine, came Harry simply, but the force of example in a brother bigger and stronger. Harry Then in 1968 he joined the Marines. from the Midwest and had been a guarded Travis in boys' battles. He told him stories about armies and fighting. He For all I know, it was at the instruction of religious fanatic. showed him the difference between the ways Joe Louis and Marciano fought. It his temple, the action was so I never understood why he was not m<!de Travis grow up on the alert for older models and advisors. Perhaps it contradictory to what he stood for. He confined for the rest of his life. But he persuaded him about God and all his duties. must have lied about Offutt to get in. He went free. He had slaughtered known As Travis developed, anyone could see was sent to Vietnam a year later. I don't criminals, all of them armed; he had acted the gulf between his need for conviction and his fear of uncertainty. He wanted to know much about his time there: he is like in self-defense, coming to the aid of a be a hero, but he needed someone to design the role for him. He had tantrums the unknown soldier. But he patrolled in minor- no matter that he was himself when he failed his own hopes, inaccessible bouts of recrimination in the mud and the jungle, and I imagine he heavy with guns and knives. He was a which he abused himself. There were early signs of violence. Once, in an shot some of the slim native people when kind of hero, as frightening as those he argument over nothing, he hit a boy two years older and broke his jaw. He he did not know whose side they were on. had killed. They let him go. It was as if he implored other kids to be his friends, but he alarmed them with his ugly need. Girls Perhaps he preached to his fellows; had passed into a movie in which fate laughed at him, and he laughed back stupidly. There were occasions when I perhaps the bizarre faith failed him. He yielded to his fantasies, and the law found him in the yard or on a street corner, alone and still laughing, but deserted by was captured. He must have been became a pillow to his unhindered, the objects of his mirth. tortured and degraded. But he escaped. unrestrained desire. ® In 1961, when he was sixteen, he found God. The first discovery came at the He left the Marines late in 1971 and \"Travis Bickle\" is excerptedfrom Suspects Uy David Thomson , Alfred church where we went at Christmas, and then there was nothing until that card in A. Knopf, $/5.95, May /985. Copyright © David Thomson. where Mary Frances sometimes spent hours at a time, sitting alone, muttering. 1974 from New York. I don't know where But Travis gave up on the Church. He said it was hypocritical and out-of-date. There he went or what he did. He may have LANDIS (continuedjrompage 62) was a small temple in Wahoo-a cult, it would be called now. Its members lived in rested, traveled or settled somewhere; he ties yet another free drink from some a commune. I picked up fragments of their doctrine. They believed in may have done all of those things. The ancient guido at a bar on 48th St. As missionary work: Travis was sent all over the West, hitching and preaching. They temple denied knowledge of him. He always, she's waiting to spend $50 on insisted on peace, celibacy and poverty as the ideal states and Travis became a became the creature of my imagining. But coke cut with head-shop garbage from a disciple of them all-learned but a crank, ragged, lonely and belligerent. He was when I received the card, I knew he had dealer who allows strippers credit. Life arrested in a demonstration at Offutt Air Force Base in 1964, protesting some of altered in the empty years. for her is a Mobius strip of trips from the the early troop movements to Vietnam. He became a cab driver. The rest is Harmony to the bar, from the bar to the The worst thing was the convert he made of his mother, her forlorn attempts nearly famous. As he went from Harlem Harmony. The Harmony forbids private to show him her faith, and his rejection of her. The last thing he wanted was to the Village, from Sutton Place to the sessions but permits the Popeyes in the company in his faith. It had to be alien to us. But his mother's woeful instability piers, from Wall Street to the Bronx, he audience to handle girls for a dollar on the heard his passion and thought it could aid her. He laughed at her visions, beating began to loathe the city. He was looking weekends. Whoopee. Liz was once a for a pretext, I think. He was in training good dancer, but now she's a yammering again, buying guns, eating bread soaked head who hangs out with anyone who will in brandy, testing himself in the flame, listen to her or get her high. writing ajournal to himself, and becoming On 46th St. off Eighth Ave. at La two men - the hard physique and the Fiesta, a bald subway toilet queen tries to interior monologue. lure a young Puerto Rican boy for $20. Then one day a child got in his taxi, a It's the last sleazy hustler bar in the neigh- girl of twelve, only to be half-pulled, borhood, with the expected dark, dingy half-seduced away by a man. He could not interior complete with pool table. Span- forget her age, her high voice, and the ish clones of Divine sit at the bar chatting debauched costume she wore. As he about nothing. drove, he searched for her. We may have A block north at the Follies, a small hunted for a lost female child, he and I, at Spanish kid dances to feed his infant much the same time. daughter. Male dancers also work the Her name was Iris. He did find her Gaiety, Eros, and Show Palace theaters. again: it is the role of whores to be His audition consisted of doing a quick predictable, to use the same streets. She strip to Sheena Easton's \"Strut\" and run- thought he wanted to buy her, like anyone ning naked through a sea of lecherous else. He could not let her see that he groping hands. Dancers are better off needed to save her. But the more he than bar hustlers, but not much. The talked to her the clearer he made it that financial arrangement is $200 a week for she was in great danger. At about the same five dances a day at three-hour intervals time, she decided that he was right, but plus whatever you do in \"floor work.\" The mad. Simultaneously, she recognized her top-dollar attraction: a blank-eyed block- own predicament and the absurdity of his head featured in the gay porno movie on as a rescuer. the video screen. He prepared himself for the assault. He Two black kids wait by an elevator on killed her pimp, the man who rented the Eighth Ave. and 47th St. This elevator is room to her, and two of her clients. Four a mugger's paradise and opens to a 64

ghastly AIDS palace, the Omega, for- done and Bacardi, the Old Man stumbles a quick strip and gyrates on a soiled mat- merly the Night Shift. The 24-hour pol- back from arB through the spacious cor- tress on the small stage. She's from a fam- icy admits every form of flotsam any time ridor that leads into the theater. It is long ily of addicts, doing shows since she was a of the day or night. Attractions include and dark and lined with prehistoric porno teenager. Her partner is a black 'Nam vet ragged 16mm prints shown from a posters. Soon the Bryant will be closed, who joins her for a number of sexual acts treehouse-like projection booth and an and once again the Old Man will be in jail. in front of a leering audience. For this imitation Central Park ramble-a bunch they get $10 each, seven to 14 times a day. of plastic trees in a line. A john from the A tourist in a loud Hawaiian shirt Follies might come here looking for a shakes his fist at the marquee of an adult Out in the boxoffice, Shorty horses cheaper trick and wind up with a missing theater a few blocks north of the Bryant around with the boys. Shorty takes tick- wallet and a black eye. screaming: \"My wallet ... they took my ets as Hector, the Puerto Rican floorman, wal-let.. .call the police.\" This is the mark harasses women who pass by the theater. Two blocks down, at a classy theater of Sammy, our man at the dance hall One has to be careful around Hector bar called Jimmy Ray's, a man named Joel upstairs. Sammy's is an anonymous black because a guy's brown eye will do when a adds another drink to his ever-increasing face that blends effortlessly into the sur- woman's not available. He'd have sex with tab. He fulfills everyone's worst expecta- roundings. You'd never guess he makes anything. Hector vowed to go on unem- tions of an exploitation director- fat, over $200 a day. Supposedly a Mr. Fixit ployment and \"get my head together\" but balding, stained clothing, big ideas with at the dance hall, he's actually a pick- he never left the theater. no results, forever handing his card to pocket and coke runner. But to live out- aspiring actresses for nonexistent parts. side the law one must be honest, and It's 5 o'clock, time for the shift to Later, he goes home to a sloppy midtown Sammy once gave us five bucks when change. Big Wally replaces Shorty in the apartment. A yellowing poster from his things were really tough. A guy to count box. Wally lives in the basement of the one Broadway flop hangs framed above a on if you're not a patron of the scumatoria theater with his dog and likes young dusty coffee table. He sits down to type on his turf. Puerto Rican boys to pay him a visit now another \"Hollywood\" treatment that will and then. Everyone laughs as Shorty once again wind up in Orion Pictures' Upstairs, the dance hall is as big as an leaves because he nearly bumps into the wastebasket. Next to the desk sits a file apartment. Hookers and transsexuals Old Man from the Sea, another Times containing hundreds of stale ideas, from who have seen it all have discreet sex Square fixture. Neither fat nor skinny but movies of the week to S&M horror- under tiny barroom tables. Maybe in always clad in ridiculous leather garb, porno. Joel has made six movies over 16 World War II it was a dime a dance. Today sprouting shocks of gray hair from every years, all of which have played Times it's $50 for a two-second handjob. open space, he makes and stars in his Square for two days apiece. own cheapo X-rated movies and can Downstairs at the porno theater, Ori- always be counted on for a stale joke, or a Four blocks south of the Deuce, Andy ental tourists and grizzled Popeyes fork hundred. Life has played a joke on the over five dollars for one of the last live-sex Old Man from the Sea, although he puts on a play. Another exploitation shows. Between acts, there's the requisite doesn't know it yet. director, yet the antithesis of Joel. He's humbled by the $10,000 budgets spent old hardcore playing, in this case Zebedy Shorty hits the cool night air and heads on his sexploitation and horror films but Colt's The Affairs of Janice. A painter, for the Deuce. He is an emaciated young definitely proud of the vision beneath it played by the director, dumps his male man from 14th St. who once held a pres- all. In the medieval Guru the Mad Monk, and female subjects in silver paint, ties tigious job for a brokerage house. Now he a demented friar delivers pained solil- them up, and kills them. The co- bounces from porno theater to porno set, oquies into a mirror. It's the only 15th- feature is one of Phil's movies, Kneel trying to make enough money to get high century movie with electrical outlets Before Me. There's no way to describe and get by. His favorite movie as a kid was visible. Fleshpot on 42nd Street has an Phil's movies without making you throw Nightmare Alley, especially the part unconvincing drag queen and a hooker up. Phil is a buddy of the Old Man's. Soon where a Popeye tells Tyrone Power: \"It'll discussing Nixon's reelection in between both will be arrested for sticking up an ice keep ya in coffee 'n cakes, bottle every ripping off johns. Andy's movies have cream parlor. day, place to sleep it off in. Anyway, it's been forgotten or ignored, and he now only temporary...just until we can get a puts on minimalist plays about gay cops The star of Kneel Before Me is trying to real geek.\" or reformed alcoholics. He talks wistfully drum up more porno work over the of moving to California and the TV shows phone in the lobby. John, an economical He meets his friend Tex at Van Dyke's. he could make there. fellow, will walk from the Lower East Side Tex is a big fellow in a leather jacket with to Times Square to spare a 90-cent an Elvis pomp. After seeing Taxi Driver The Popeyes begin yakking at a screen token, has been doing this 17 years, and at an Indiana shopping mall when he was gone white at the Bryant Theater. The can see no end in sight. He's still very 16, he knew the movies were for him. Tex Old Man, projectionist tonight, is in a handsome for all he's been through. floats from editing room to editing room deep nod and forgot to change reels. When asked why people dig porn, John's cranking out low-budget crap. Van Dyke's Smack in the middle of 42nd St. between cryptic reply is,\"It's all happy horseshit is a waxen yet preserved Forties-style Sixth Ave. and Broadway, the Bryant is a and space dust.\" restaurant on 43rd St. near Eighth Ave. rotted Forties movie palace showing old Occasionally a Popeye comes by your hardcore in between live sex shows. The The union projectionist hurries table to sell Times Square souvenirs like projection room is a hangout for all man- through the reel change so he can cross garish two-inch buttons proclaiming I ner of strange characters: The Haitian ... the street to his next gig, changing tapes HATE EVERYBODY. Shorty and Tex like it Jumbo ...Jose the Flasher... a union pro- at a tiny videoscreen theater. He sells pre- because you can go next door to Back jectionist who makes two token appear- scription painkillers and eats them like Date Magazines, buy a couple of detec- ances each week and sells fake leather, M&M's. A veteran of other adult houses tive or girlie magazines, and while away fake jewelry, fake drugs. High on metha- that no longer exist, he works the remain- the hour before the movie. Soon Van ing small circuit. Millie, a cute mixed-Spanish girl, does 65

Dyke's will be closed , too. until the early Twenties , 42nd Street was playground had come into existence, Shorty and Tex head around the corner the heart of the legitimate theater district. what then? Where would the so-called from the Deuce for the Roxy, once a strip joint and now a video grindhouse: $3.50 (An accurate count is difficult to make, human \"sleaze\" have vanished to? No- buys you four big hits 24 hours a day. They climb a decrepit stairwell plastered because some old theater buildings have body cares to discuss this aspect of the with dull mainstream movie posters. A ticket taker sits stoned behind bullet- been divided into two or more smaller situation, but the sleaze would move proof glass. Where strippers once worked a runway, there are now two tiny screen- auditoriums.) Many of these theaters northward into the West Forties and Fif- ing rooms you can go in and out of at will. have been devoted to showing movies for ties , the present heart of the theater dis- sCinema 1 is playing Let Do It Again well over 60 yea rs now and so can trict, and soon the owners of the and It Lives Again, but every seat is taken. The guys go next door to a quin- scarcely be blamed for the current sordid theaters- in many cases, entrepreneurs tessential Times Square bill: Superman and Superjly. Shorty and Tex are the only state of affairs on the block. They are more interested in real estate than in the white people other than one Popeye and a nodding drifter in an Army jacket. Guys commonly called \"grind\" houses , because performing arts-would seek to repeat roam the aisles selling loose joints. Nobody seems to work here. of the number of times a movie can be the experiment they observed being car- The tired theatrics of Superman look shown in them during the course of a very ried out so successfully on 42nd Street. even worse on a washed-out, tiny video screen. It puts the audience to sleep. long day, but the nickname has a pejora- Down the theaters would go and in their Superfly wakes them up . Everybody's seen it and they're soon singing along tive meaning in part because it appears to place would rise more vast, faceless office with \"F reddie's Dead.\" The movie becomes wallpaper as people argue over echo the phrase \"bump and grind,\" once buildings, filled with more lawyers, den- its Harlem locations and speak back to the screen. The video screen is less used to describe the gyrations of dancers tists, and businessmen. The sleaze imposing than yo ur regular big movie screen. Sort of like a large TV with lousy in burlesque houses. Grind houses can be would be obliged to move westward into reception. divided roughly into three categories, Clinton, to be followed by the same The two guys groove on this funky atmosphere and think about the future of according to the kinds of movies they dreary consequences, and then on to the Times Square. Friends tell them the Deuce's days are numbered, and soon the present: hard- and soft-core porn , martial banks of the Hudson , where the last rem- bille-haired ladies and bald men in suits will move in. But no grindhouse blues for arts, and ordinary movies, identical to nants of the \"lower orders\" would be these two. Let others lie weeping when the wrecker's ball strikes the Selwyn, the what can be viewed in any of the fashion- invited to leap, like hapless lemmings, Liberty, the Cine 42. These boys would rather be where they are now, checking able movie houses located on the Upper into the river. out the video screen at the Roxy, Grind- house of the Future. East Side. Among the whoppers being told by When they were kids, Times Square The grind houses sell hundreds of champions of the redevelopment plan for was a mythical place-like in, you know, Midnight Cowboy. Now it's a daily exist- thousands of dollars' worth of tickets 42nd Street is that at least seven of the ence. The only concern they have is for the future of the wonderful and not so annually to tourists and respectable citi- theaters now serving as grind houses wonderful people they've got down with. Twenty years of Times Square fits on no zens of New York, at prices much lower would be restored to the legitimate fold. one's resume. Experiences like these can't be categorized. But from the audi- than those prevailing in the well-groomed It is true that these theaters have consid- ence at the Roxy to the dancers at the area of \" Dr y Dock country.\" These erable architectural merit and in several Follies, it's a family affair. ® patrons of the 42nd Street theaters are in cases retain a goodly portion of their orig- GILL (continued from page 62) nues, most of them left over from the many cases blue-collar workers, probably inal interior decoration ; poverty is the period when, from the turn of the century of lower middle-class origin and more friend of preservation, and so, on occa- often black and Puerto Rican than white; sion, is neglect. But their back-stage therefore, they are regarded with suspi- quarters - dressing rooms, bathrooms , cion by the elite financiers who, under and the like-cannot be brought up to the pretext of cleaning up prostitution, the minimum standards required today sex-shops, hard-core pornographic mov- except by the expenditure of tens of mil- ies, and other deplorable activities, are lions of dollars. Those millions will never eager to force blacks and Puerto Ricans be spent. Moreover, even if the theaters out of the neighborhood. were able to be renovated, no use is likely For it is perfectly obvious that the plan to be found for them. The 1984-1985 that the powers-that-be are determined theatrical season has been the worst in a to impose upon us is elitest through and decade, and at the moment at least 15 through. It is an attempt to turn 42nd legitimate theaters are dark and threaten Street and Times Square into a second to remain dark throughout the year. . Rockefeller Center, filled with lawyers, By all means short of its destruction, dentists, and businessmen in three-piece let us improve the wretched stretch of suits and polished brogans . William 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Stern, former head of the Urban Devel- avenues. Let us improve it by the build- opment Corporation, which is the chief ing of a much-needed new subway sponsor of the plan, admitted as much in station, by ampler policing, by more an interview when the plan was launched. responsible maintenance of sidewalks Quickl y, his public relations advisers and building facades. Let us confront the urged him to shut up. It wasn't increased problems there face to face and not rentals and an absence of blacks and piously pretend that they will go away if a Puerto Ricans that the city and state couple of billions of dollars are spent wished to achieve. Not at all! On the con- kowtowing to high-priced tenants and trary, they were seeking to provide an condo owners. Let movies of every vari- improved playground for everyone , on ety continue to flourish in their natural the order of the Tivoli Gardens in habitat-the coarse, lively, noisy, sleep- Copenhagen. less , tireless, garish bedazzlement of the And once that happy, spotless, sexless Great White Way! ~ 66

35TH Illusion is Truth: INTERNATIONAL Perception as the Basis for Design DESIGN In designing a page or product, planning a shopping CONFERENCE center, lighting a restaurant, or making a television IN ASPEN commercial, we dealwith how the world is perceived. JUNE 16-21, 1985 It is not seen as it is measured and that sets the idea of illusion. Which is true-what is seen or what is mea- sured?The two are different yet both are true. That is the paradox to be treated in the conference \"Illusion is Truth.\" Conferees will explore illusion as the key to per- ception, particularly in relation to graphics, architec- ture, industrial design, interior design, filmmaking and other disciplines. Conference Chairman: Dr. Jerome Lettvin, Professor of Communications Physiology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Housing and Travel: Aspen Ski I am enclosing: Tours, 300 South Spring Street, Aspen, Colorado, 81611 , 800.525.8955 0$375 (U.S. Dollars) Regular Fee 0$200 Fee for one additional member of Camping Information: U.S. Forest Service, 806 West Hallam, Aspen, household Colorado 81611 o $125 Fee for full time student Additional Information: IDCA, Box 664, Aspen, Colorado 81612, (photocopy of current student ID 303.925.2257 or 303.925.6265 required with application) List all applicants by name and make NameC,) check payable to IDCA. Your cancelled Add ress check isyour confirmation. Government purchase orders will be honored. No food or lodging included in fees. Please complete the following informa- City. Slale. Zip Code tion for all registrants and return to: Profession IDCA. c/oThe Bank of Aspen, Box 0, Aspen, Colorado 81612. Firm Affiliation Slaying in Aspen. if known

Object of the Game by Marcia Pally able, Mulvey wrote , because it provides the female is repressed in culture and men with a larger-than-life, protected elided from the screen. If we're ever to \"Oh god , the gaze is male\" was the orig- arena in which to assuage their fears of have a female subject, we'd better begin un- inal outcry of feminist film criticism . And castration. Later, Mulvey likened the dermining the present cinema, perhaps since film depends on a series of looks- structure of film to the structures of sto- by making the elision of women patent. yours, the director's, the hero's - with the ries and other folk and mass culture. (Her gaze goes the entire construction of cin- colleague, Paul Willeman, identified the As important as the works of Mulvey ema, from the list of characters to the psychological processes Mulvey associ- and Johnston were, by the late Seventies way we see them. Over the last decade, ates with narrative cinema as being part of more was needed: more than descrip- women have been breaking their ball- non-narrative cinema as well.) tions of how tough women have it, how points trying to describe what a female word and gaze are determined by male gaze might be, what images might ema- In the dark theater where reality needs (and, in turn, shape them), and nate from a female subject with her own recedes and the story envelops, accord- how thoroughly they serve his purposes. language and vision. The feminist's word ing to Mulvey, the male viewer identifies At best, women are left, as E. Ann Kaplan on the woman-as-object seemed final: with the male lead and partakes of his vic- put it, in a \"position of negativity-sub- inert, blind , and silent, she is useless to tories: He gets the good girl and gets to verting rather than positing:' Ruby Rich us. Yet perhaps that judgment was hasty. punish the bad, either way dashing the asked: 'i\\ccording to Mulvey, the woman Perhaps there is something about being threat of the absent phallus. Compound- is not visible in the audience which is per- an object that is useful to us. ing this satisfaction is the thrill of watch- ing women erotically displayed. All in all , ceived as male; according to Johnston, The earliest feminist critics had the the male viewer is left with a rather heady the woman is not visible on the miserable job of developing a critique and sense of himself. screen .... How does one formulate an un- aesthetic in a field dominated by men . derstanding of a structure that insists on With few exceptions - Dorothy Arzner But the presence of women can trigger our absence even in the face of our pres- and Ida Lupino in Hollywood; Maya castration anxieties even in the midst of ence?\" Deren and Shirley Clarke in the experi- seduction. If escape by \"getting\" or \"pun- mental realm - directors and producers ishing\" isn't a propos, there's always out- The answer to Rich's question lies, possib- had , until the era of feminist criticism it- and-out denial. Film allows men to make ly, in retaining some critical perspec- self, all been male. The points of view of the women onscreen into fetishes , phallic tive about psychoanalysis and semiotics, most films were male , with the female substitutes that not only neutralize the and in keeping an eye on reality, which, characters (even in \"women's films\") threat of castration but become positively re- unlike epistemological systems, isn't informing female viewers how men assuring. Between the voyeurism implicit codified or closed, and where, for all expect them to behave. Even within the in identification, the sadism inherent in its messiness, change occurs. So thought frame, women were looked at; men did conquest, and what Mulvey calls fetish- writer Julia Lesage, who called the semiotic the looking. istic scopophilia (love of looking), cinema theories of Jacques Lacan \"a discourse proffers men an erotic free-for-all. which is totally male\" which seals wom- Laura Mulvey, in her germinal article (Women filmgoers don't figure into this en off in the realm of exclusion and \"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema:' picture much, except as identifying with childlike helplessness. And so thought drew attention to this male hegemony, the female object onscreen and so ren- Sandy Flitterman and Judith Barry, who, but even before her 1975 essay, women dering themselves objects. In the main, in an effort to return to a little comfortable were angrily protesting the \"roles\" per- Mulvey considers the perspective of cin- materialism, argued for an aesthetic that mitted us by the male perspective. Mar- ema masculine and its intention to \"subverted the production of 'woman' as jorie Rosen in Popcorn Ji>nus: Women, address men.) This male bacchanalia is commodity.\" Lucy Arbuthnot and Gail Movies, and the American Dream, Molly precisely the pleasure Mulvey would like Seneca, also dissatisfied with feminist Haskell in From Reverence to Rape, to vitiate, replace with a counter-cinema, film criticism's focus on male dominion and Joan Mellen in Women and Their and eventually with a new language of and female lack, noted that new feminist Sexuality in the New Film all described desire. We can't be expected to produce films, by destroying narrative and identifi- the variations of good girl (obsequious one out of the blue-what with such cation with characters, destroyed both and protected) and bad girl (rebellious basic tools as narrative and vision set up male and female pleasure. They went to and punished) that we were allowed to as a playground for male psyches - but Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell in be. With Mulvey, however, psychoanaly- we can start by subverting the one that Gentlemen Prefer Blondes to find role sis and semiotics entered the picture, and models. the discussion shifted from the content of exists. films to their structure and how structure Claire Johnston, in \"Women's Cinema Leslie Stern, in her provocative Screen benefits the psychological needs of men. article, pointed out that, with all our dis- as Counter-Cinema,\" took her theory cussion of male fantasy, we hadn't both- • further, declaring that there aren't any ered to distinguish it from fiction, from women onscreen at all- just the male and narrative not meant to be perceived as Traditional narrative film is pleasur- tbe non-male. Culling from Juliet Mitch- true or as a direct expression of secret ell's work in psychology, Johnston says desires . If we understood more about 68

sMM heirs: They can stop buses and pay the freight. dilemma the very prese nce of those pas- sions poses. Feminist cinema should take how the mind uses obviously imaginary found in everyone's mental library. They the plot in some other direction . In thi s material, we might not conclude that may not be products of gender at all. And way, we could develop a new frame of ref- every male fantasy, every movie made by wouldn't that be a boon to debunking tra- erence, a body of exceptions and heresies men, exactly mirrors life or provides how- ditional femininity. born of the contradiction that female to instructions for living. Some are meant desire presents. Hopefully, out of this to be fictions. \"It is possible to explore In Variety, Bette Gordon said to hell new frame of reference would come sto- questions of stimulation and arousal:' with it and put one of her own fictions ries and pictures that don't rehearse the wrote Stern, \"without submitting to a into celluloid: She made her heroine both process and rhythm of male psychology. Pavlovian notion of cinema....\" object and voyeur. And it's just this sort of Instead of traditional narrative, which is manipulation that Teresa de Lauretis rec- obviously in cahoots with male sexuality With a more thorough appreciation of ommends in her new book, Alice (hero encounters dark, mysterious chal- fiction, Stern suggested, we might not Doesn't: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema: lenge, struggles, and emerges not only bother so much with subverting male Find the contradictions in our culture and victorious but a Man), a language might images. Instead, we might develop the run with them. form that would reflect female lust. images in women's minds. We might, for the first time, be honest about the ones Women can, according to de Lauretis, E. Ann Kaplan looks not so much for we have and be able to pursue them fur- look, though we're said only to be seen; contradictions as for gaps. Starting with ther, since we wouldn't assume they indi- we can, in fact , desire, though we're said feminist Julia Kristeva's idea that women cate private longings for real-life lust only to be desired. Film noir even lets are what's \"not yet represented\" in cur- murder. Fictions about voyeurism and this contradiction surface. But traditional rent language and ideologies, Kaplan violence, we might discover, aren't prod- cinema tends to punish voyeuristic ladies takes a cue from the reinterpretation of ucts of only male psyches; they may be for pursuing passions they're not sup- mothering in Riddles o/the Sphinx (a film posed to have, thereby resolving the by Mulvey and Peter Wollen) and sug- gests motherhood as an area ripe for rede- scription. Mothers may be romanticized or vilified (the cause of your shrink bills), but the real conditions of raising children and the implications of childhood help- lessness have been brushed under the rug. In fact, the male need to dominate and conquer or make women into fet- ishes may stem not so much from the par- ticular fear of castration as from the more overwhelming fear of being once again helpless and dependent on mom. Under- standably, the conditions of infancy, of being mothered, have been repressed. For the return of the repressed, stay tuned . • All in all, recent criticism asks that we avoid both despair and ivory-tower femi- nism, that we look to film, life, and the images in our minds for contradictions and elisions - anything that gets us off the track of male art and language and gets us rolling with the production of our own. The process begins with subversion and sedition and ends in a new aesthetic. Mothering is a comfortable place to start, both socially acceptable and \"politically correct\": The fact of it is not a male con- struction. But this can't be the only area of investigation. We might want to recon- sider objectification, this time from our vantage point. It's certainly unrepre- sented by men, who hardly ever admit their covert desire to be overtly admired. It's certainly part of women's experience, in life and art. And it might not be a con- dition of only immobility and silence. Men may think of women as absence, and even believe we think of ourselves this way, but why suppose they're right? 69

FILm FORum Psychoanalysis claims that the male mind is dominated by fear of castration ATWIN CINEMA NEXT DOOR TO SOHO and the Oedipal process. Lacan applied this idea to culture by suggesting that Presenting NYC premieres of independent films each male child enters the process of & retrospectives of foreign & American classics symbolizing, of language in the broadest sense, when he experiences loss or fear of May 8-21: ELVIS GRATTON & Other Grotesques loss (the ultimate privation being the May 22-28: FRECKLED RICE by Stephen C. Ning & VACANT LOT by Ken Selden absent phallus) and learns the sign or May 29-June 11: GAZA GHETTO by PeA Holmquist, Joan Mandell, Pierre Bjorklund word for the lack. But even if we accept this picture of masculinity (and many June 12-25: WHITE ELEPHANT by Werner Grusch, starring Peter Firth feminists do, though there are other June 26-July 9: A MAN LIKE EVA by Radu Gabrea, starring Eva Mattes models of male development), must we accept the psychoanalytic notion of femi- Open 7 days a week. Call or write for calendar & member discount information. ninity? Men may worry about castration, but are women necessarily plagued by 57 watts Street, NYC 10013 Box Office: (212)431-1590 penis envy? Why assume complementar- Partially supported by the NYS Council on the Arts & the National Endowment for the Arts ity? And is castration anxiety necessarily the decisive trigger in the development of **************************** language? * FILM STYLE & TECHNOLOGY: * When you get right down to it, men * * may see sex as penetration, martial, even * * sadistic. Does that automatically make * HISTORY AND ANALYSIS * women masochistic? Perhaps women see * * sex as bringing a man inside for the satis- * * faction of the motion. Men may regard * Barry Salt * female genitalia as a frightening abyss, * while women may know it as a muscle, as * * suction, as sensation. Just because men * can't feel it doesn't mean there is no pleas- * * THE FIRST HISTOR Y OF FILM STYLE ure there. * * PLUS The relation of film style to film technology ** I'm not suggesting a samizdat culture of * PLUS The first twenty years of film history femininity that's just waiting for an open- * completely rewritten * ing, but simply that Rashoman had a * PLUS New methods of film analysis * point. Besides, if women take psycho- PLUS A new practical approach to film theory * analysis on faith, we are lost. We will * * PLUS The reasoned demolition of recent film * think of ourselves as passive, masochis- * * * tic, and mute till the end of time- not * * PLUS theorizing * only self-defeating but patently false (I * 140 illustrations 400 big pages * am, after all, writing this piece). Folks who have never run the world, who have * * been \"unrepresented\" and silent, one day * speak up, enter the public sphere, and things change. And the way we think : From specialist film bookshops - or direct - at $33.00: about them changes, too. Complemen- tarity makes for a cogent theory, but : by surface mail (Inc.p&p) or $43.00 by air mail from * thankfully life is sloppier than that. Psy- * choanalysis describes a world, but the real world is not so constant. * ******* STARWORD ******* * * * • * * 3 Minford Gardens, LONDON W14 OAN, ENGLAND * Instead of accepting male construc- * tions about the women they see and then **************************** trying to worm our way out of them, we should perhaps find out what it's like when you're the one who's seen. How, for example, do women use the male gaze? \"Some men fantasized themselves as passive, others as dominant ... [itl didn't matter to me or to any other stripper, so long as they paid attention. We wanted control. They... yielded all responsibility to the woman on stage. The thrill I got from stripping was power. I was seen as powerful; more important, I felt power- 70

ful.\" These words by strippe r Seph Weene Cross- Dressing throw fe minism and film criticism for a & Movie-Making loop. Stripping is supp osed to be the bot- tom of the sex ist barrel , and wo me n aren't Hollywood Androgyny supposed to overpower the men who watch the m. But they do. Being an object Rebecca Bell-Metereau. \"Don 't you find it confusing being a woman in the '80s?,\" may contain some of the contradictions Jessica Lange asks Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, one of the most popular movies in and fi ss ures de Lauretis and Kapl an were recent years. Hollywood Androgyny shows how cross-dressing and other sex looking for; it may be a site of change. exchanges, seemingly a rare and strange phenomenon, have in fact been a We'd be fools to ignore it. recurring motif in American film since its earliest days. \"(A) lively, eye-opening survey.\" -Publis!ters Weekly. 272 pp., illustrated. $24.95 The objectification of women, robbing us not only of age ncy but of opinion The Films of George Roy Hill and language, is the feminist film critic's culprit of choice. But perhaps the ex- Andrew Horton. \"What is George's special allure? .. . In the environment of film, perience of being looked at changes ac- where there is so much bad taste, so many berserkers, amateurs, executives and cording to what goes along with being people 'puttin ' on airs,' George is truly a straight arrow. He assumes the title of seen. And if it does, we'd do better to sift 'professional artist in residence' and gives it a good name.\"-from the foreword by Out when being looked at is annihilating Paul Newman. Covers all HiU's films and live television work and includes impor- and when it's a lark-when it is, as it was tant screenplay sequences later cut from finished films . lilus. 224 pp., $25.00 for Weene , a source of power. If we don't, Send check or money order to Dept. JN at the address beldW, including $2.00 per we'll end up destroying the pleasure we take in film (as Arbuthnot and Seneca order for postage and handling. warn) as well as the pleasure of flirtation in life. We'll end up removing all images WRITE and fleeting glances in an effort to rid our- PENNSYLVANIA selves of the demeaning ones. We'l! end up denying ourselves the ego-boost and You need information. If it's about Pennsvlva nia let us thrill of admiration in order to be admir- help. We work closely with w riters and' directors - ers and poets of our desire. Not only a supplementing their research , putting them in contact with case of babies and bathwater, this is one- historians and industry experts and arranging meetings with stop shopping for a chador: local people so filmmakers can lea rn about life in Pennsylvania . Share our wealth of information. Call us at Of course, Weene is desc ribing the (7 17) 787-5333 or write: perks of performing ; the perks of watch- ing begin with identification , either in Pennsylva nia Film Bureau the classic Freudian sense or, as some feminists prefer, on the Lacanian model: De partment of Comme rce Watching film approximates the mirror 461 Forum Building stage of early childhood when the one- year-old first recognizes himself in the Harrisb urg. Pe nns~'l va ni a 17120 glass but imagines that the reflection is more in control of its environment than 71 he is of his own. The reflection, then , becomes an ego-ideal for the child, much as the film hero becomes (through identi- fication) a more glamorous version of the male viewer. Extending this to women, we have the female fig4re onscreen lavished with attention by everything from the lighting to placement in the frame - regardless of the fate of the particular leading lady. She can't help but be a persuasive ego-ideal for the female audience. Commanding the gazes of those within the frame and those in the theater, she embodies the powers Weene remembers , and imparts the possibility of such power to the women who watch her. Why should we give it up? • As a political condition, being an object is frightful, but as part of play it's one of life's charms. And we all need it. We need the admiration pure and simple, and the

command it offers ; we need the pos- are simply not reliable. We get cold, hun- pattern is established back there in the turing, the dressing up , the poises and gry, or wet , and no one comes; we have to hunting and gathering stage, the rest is moves, the risk and denouement. We cry for attention. None of us wants to be mere repetition.) But this problem is per- need it onscreen, to evoke interest and that dependent again - though we would haps no more irksome than Freud's arbi- emotion. In fact , we need it in all art. And love the pampering and applause. Life trary assertion that the phallus is at the we need it for seduction and sex, and all during infancy may not be perfect, but we center of everyone's ps yche. Why not, as the energy and replenishment it brings. are cushioned and coddled then as we feminists have asked, the breast? Sucking will never be again. So it may not be the is inescapably baby's first erotic thrill. There's no use saying we have no fuss about the phallus that forms the basis objects in a feminist seduction, that both of our psychology, but how we resolve the In any case, the opposition between partners are subjects. One person may be apparent opposition between the delights object and subject is indeed apparent; the subject one moment, the other later of being an object and the powers of inde- adults don't have to choose between on (the way people \"take turns\" when pendence. them-to wit: Weene, Gordon. Knowing they play other games), but at any given that should be one of the benefits of age. moment , someone is the object or the For reasons that may be more techno- And it's not only Weene and Gordon who game can't be played . And we might as logical or economic than psychological, avoid making that choice; so does every well admit that at that moment , being the men have been shunted toward develop- woman who ever watched a movie. As de object is a charge. When , at the close of ing independence and eschewing, even Lauretis noted, no one can conceive of the 18th century, men gave up their per- fearing, the conditions of infancy. Too herself purely as an object; the very acts ruques , maquillage, and brocade for the bad , for with those conditions goes a of viewing and identification presume plain frock coat, it was a suppression of good deal of desirable attention. But hav- subjectivity. Film is a lark for the female play, a gesture of denial. No sense in ing been shunted, men can allow them- spectator because she experiences her- women making the same mistake. selves the pleasures of the object only on self as a subject yet identifies with the the sly, if at all. Women, by contrast, have female object onscreen. At least for the We can continue fiddling with this need been urged to develop themselves simply duration of the reels, she enjoys efficacy to be an object and rewrite psychology as objects, which allows them inde- and the thrill of admiration. In the theat- from that point of view. Infants are, after pendence and efficacy only on the sly, er, women have it all. But \"having it all\" is all , objects-can't walk, can't talk-and through manipulation, if at all. Admit- possible only because the theater-or objects of their parents' affections. As tedly, the explanation for the difference more precisely, theater, performance- infants, we are pampered, applauded, between men and women is unsatisfac- imposes certain conditions on actors and and set in center stage. But we're also not tory: What conditions of survival, the viewers that don't necessarily obtain in in control of our bodies, much less our question remains, initially directed men life. lives . We're dependent on grown-ups for one way and women the other? (Once the survival and pleasure- and grown-ups The objectification in cinema, as part The ,errect com,anion to French rdm This one-volume history is the fruit of over 20 years' critical involvement with French cinema. Roy Armes stresses the spectacular output of the French industry since cinema was invented in the 1890s and demonstrates how each decade has been defined by a particular style and set of assump- tions . The essential focus of the study is the filmmakers themselves and their work: Lumiere, Melies, Feuillade, and Gance among the pioneers; Clair and Vigo, Renoir, Came, and Pagnol in the classic era of the 30s; Bresson and Tali of the generation that emerged during the war; Godard, Resnais, and liuffaut amid the New Wave of the late 50s; and recent individualists such as Rohmer and Marguerite Duras. Armes discusses the successive patterns of French production style, gives a detailed analysis of each major film, and chronicles signficant developments within the industry.. paper $10.95 Available at better bookstores or directly from: OXFORD PAPERBACKS Oxford University Press· 200 Madison Avenue· New York, NY 10016 72

of play, fo llows certain rules . J o han about the world - about th e economy, H aving nothing to lose from objectifi ca- Huizinga , in hi s thorough study of the mothering, language. Outside th e co n- tion , they ca n sit back and enjoy it. They game (Homo Ludens: a study o/the play text of play the object has a lot ro lose, can cultivate the who le seductive game, element in culture) , ca ll s play o utside and lookin g for ve nu es of s ubj ecti vity the rituals and performance of it. As Boyd ordinary life , not serious but co mple tely becomes imperati ve. But in the effort to MacDonald said: ['m not just a perso n, absorbing, connected with no material ward off the dangers of objectificati on, I'm a piece of meat. The narcissism that interest , and designed to display some- women are doing th e mselves a disser- so dismays C hrisropher Lasch et al. is thing out of the ordinary (an object or vice: We're coming close ro renouncing cause for worry if it's the only view one skill) calculated ro arouse admiration. its delights . In order ro develop a la n- has of th e self. But as one persona or When objectification meets these condi- guage and aes thetic that speak to our mode among many, it's a relief from the tions , you've got the buzz of flattery and pleasure, we may be discounting one routine and the businesslike. It's anim at- the prerogatives of the desired . Anyone basic way to get it. mg. who's ever been looked up and down and hopefully approached knows the feel- We shouldn't have to choose between The situation grows less peachy when ing-the sense of dominion , of running subject and object (and God knows we gays are among those who fag bash , fire, the show. Moreover, the powers of the shouldn't impose such a choice on our- evict, and laugh at the boys in the band- subject remain at yo ur command if you selves); the alternatives are false . We'll all in a rage, pre sum ab ly, at men who should require them . When Weene, Gor- know we've \"made it\" when occasions of aren't real men, who are like women, who don, and female filmgoers toy with objec- being an object are circumscribed, recog- allow them se lves ro be, among other tification , it's in the realm of play. In a nized for the games they are, and ren- things , objects. Then all the calamitou s better world - maybe Herbert Marcuse's dered impotent with regard ro the rest of implications objectification has tradition- \"nonrepressively sublimated, libidinously one's life. When we can have both. ally held for women co me swooping moral\" future- objectification would down , all the connections between being never be anything else. • an object, silence, and submis sion. When the requirements of play are not Uropic, of course. Yet in this world, gay It's in our interest, then , ro unhitch the observed, the show is off, and objectifica- men have not had ro choose-at least not delight of being looked at from silence tion takes on a different cast. It becomes in gay company or gay theater. They can and helplessness, ro dissociate the pleas- a permanent state of being, a positibn of quite consciously make themselves ob- ures bequeathed by admiration from political and psychological helplessness. jects, since it doesn't render them trivial exclusion, from our deposition outside Outside the context of play, objectifica- in each other's eyes; it doesn't banish the production of culture and thought. In tion means that women have little say them forever ro the realm of decor. It short, to keep objectification in the realm doesn't rob them of words and images; it doesn't preclude their producing culture. of play. But to keep it. ® Quips, quirks, lobs and slams for Mail Order Dept. TC Simon & Schuster, Inc. tennis fanatics, net smashers, 1230 Avenue of the Americas NewYork,N.Y. 10020 ball chasers and racket spinners, Please send me _____ including: \\ It~ copy(ies) of Tennis Anyone (50021-x) ingle fiI. -,\\ @ $5.95 each. (Publisher pays postage and han- \"'At.. dling charges.) If I am not satisfied, I may return it ..... postpaid within 14 days for a full refu,nd. __ Enclosed is my check or money order __ Charge my __Visa or __ MasterCard #--'-------- Exp. Date _ _ Mo/Yr _ __ Signature _ _ _ _ _ _ __ Name __________________ Address _________________ City _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ State ______ Zip _ _ __ 73

Iaustralia newton-john Hollywood 2000 By Paul Budra and Graham Yost introduction of the Hyperion Nasalast III artificial nose. Conan the Utilitarian, 1989. This, the most success- Through the miracle oftime travel, we have received ful of the Conan films, again starred Arnold Schwar- a copy of a film encyclopedia, Hollywood 2000, zenegger as the hulking hero who, in his fifth time out, published sometime toward the end ofthis century. It had to rescue a sacred orb from a group of black peo- covers the history of cinema: the actors, directors, ple with odd physiques and haircuts. As he dismem- techniques, genres, and, of course, the films them- bers and decapitates foe after foe, Conan is heard to selves-all of them. As there are over one million mutter, \"The end justifies the means.\" Hence the title. entries, we present here only a small selection, but a De Palma, Arnold. American golf pro (1943- ), selection that well represents the length and breadth primarily known as the brother of film director/interna- ofthis most remarkable tome. tional terrorist Brian De Palma. Arnold's ohly film: a 30- second Super-8 effort detailing the destruction of a Australia, the disappearance of. During the filming dead frog with a firecracker. of Koala Zone, director John Landis put cast and crew into what many critics believe to be a dangerous situa- Coppola, Francis Ford. After the disappointments of tion when he had his effects team implant 2700 ten- his autobiographical musical, The Coppola Club megaton nuclear devices under the continental shelf (1984), and his inside-Hollywood apologia, Beverly of the once great land mass, in an effort to produce Hills Coppola (1985), the aging baby mogul slowly res- what he called \"a hyper-real bang for the buck\" at the urrected his career with a series of Scottish Mafia end of his film. Upon detonation, Australia imploded films, starring Marlin Perkins as Donald MacOrleone and the sea rushed in. Landis and his helicopter pilot and featuring the famous frisson of a sheep's head were the only survivors. Charges were not brought, as impaled on a golf club. Then, as is his wont, he risked it the Australian courts no longer existed. Landis did, all again with his monumental Velveeta City (1988), however, receive a strong reprimand from the Direc- which was a hit both with the critics and at the boxof- tors' Guild. In the end, Landis did not use the shot, as, fice. (See separate entry.) he said, \"It looked just too damn much like a continent Gaffer. 1. An electrician. 2. An old man with no teeth being blown away by nUkes.\" Instead, he used stock who loiters around the sets of major motion pictures Japanese model-city-being-destroyed footage. and mumbles things like, ''Ar in de olden day, ya didn't Cimino, Michael. American directorlscreenwriter na har no hey-de-boy. Yer know?\" (1947- ). Cimino followed his 1978 Academy Ghostbusters II. In this film-within-a-film sequel to the Award-winning Deer Hunter with the $40-million, phe- blockbuster of 1984, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and nomenally disastrous Western Heaven's Gate. Then, Sigourney Weaver appear as themselves, making a by some strange strain of lemming logic, Hollywood sequel, when the ghost of John Belushi begins to continued to finance Cimino's megabuck flbps. First haunt the set, searching for food, mixed drugs, and was Knocking on Heaven's Gate (1987), a $SO-million percentage points, claiming that Aykroyd originally comedy starring Bob Dylan as a born-again Shiite wrote the film for him, not Murray. The actors have to Moslem who tries to get through the Pearly Gates, use the techniques of the characters they play in order armed only with a Czech Skorpion machine-pistol and to trap their protoplasmic friend. a beltful of Russian stick grenades. He followed this in Gilligan's Face. Ever wonder what happened to Bob 1991 with Five Fingers of Love, a $75-million Kung Fu Denver, star of TV's Gilligan's Island? Well, since musical, and then in 1995 topped them all with Fiddler March 16, 1971, he has been sitting in front of one of on the Hoof, his $1 OO-million musical-Western-histori- Andy Warhol's cameras, 24 hours a day, 365 days a cal-comedy paean to the joys of bestiality among Rus- year. A loophole in his contract allows him out every sian horse thieves during the Mensheviks' brief reign February 29. Warhol always wanted to do a film of a of power in 1917. As of this writing , Cimino is report- man aging, and Denver admits he wasn't getting many edly in preproduction for the first $1-billion film: a offers, so... breakdance history of the universe. The Big Bang Lucas, George. American writer/producer/director alone is expected to cost $72 million. (1943- ). Immensely successful with his nine Star Cocaine. A.k.a. blow, sniff, my trusted friend, the only Wars and six Indiana Jones films, Lucas retired from thing that matters, God, etc. The all-prevalent, endem- the film industry in 1977 to start his own religion. He ic use of this narcotic has continued since the early now lives in Belgium, a country he purchased in 1999 1970s, undergoing a brief dip in the late 1980s when and the name of which he has changed to Alderan. the elite switched to the somewhat dangerous mixture Mortuary science. Popular film genre of the early of heroin and gunpowder (administered in a manner 1990s. Titles include: Meet John Doe, D.o.A. (1992), called, in drug jargon, \"chasing the ambulance\") . Rigor Morty and Co. (1991), Veins 0' Gold (1990), and Cocaine has become even more popular with the 1998 The Morgue, The Merrier (1993). Newton-John, Olivia. Australian singer/actress (1953- ), generally recognized as the greatest film actress of the 19805. While her films of the 1970s and early 19805 (Xanadu, Two of a Kind) did not, at the 74

time, elicit great critical acclaim , they were subse- Inot so young zorba the geek quently reevaluated , leading to retrospectives, books, and many film offers. In 1989 she won the Academy Stallone, Sylvester. American actor/writer/producer/ Award for Best Performance by an Actress as the director/head of state (1946-1997) , who rose from roles female lead in the musical version of Macbeth , in soft-core sex movies in the late 1960s to become the directed by Doug Fiegler (ex-lead singer for The third American actor/president (after Ronald Reagan Knack). Notable also because it was John Travolta's and Tony Randall) . As a director he was known for last film, the movie was highlighted by Newton-John's making sequels to other people's films (Stayin' Alive, disco-rap sleepwalking scene: \" Out damned spot! Godfather III, The Return of Citizen Kane, and The Out, out I say! Y'all come back another day'/The Bicycle Thief Escapes) . He was best known for his Thane of Fife, he had a wife, but she ran off to star in A Rocky sextet, which included Rocky IV: The Reaction- Double Life./So come out clean 'cos I'm the Scottish ary, in which he fought a communist; Rocky V: The queen.lDon't want no guff, lead on Macduff.ll'm get- Anti-Intellectual, in which he combatted a computer- ting hot, we'll burn 'em good.lSo come out damned controlled robot; and Rocky VI: The Xenophobe, in which he took on a ferocious little E.T. After this last spot to Birnham Wood .\" film , in 1990, he was engineered into the highest pub- Not So Young, 1927. In this forgotten silent classic res- lic office in America by David Geffen. A reasonably urrected by Kevin Brownlow, Fatty Arbuckle and Char- popular president, he was assassinated in 1997 by lie Chaplin play two young matinee idols who are Jodie Foster, in an attempt to impress Henry Winkler. entrapped by 13-year-old girls who, to anyone's eye, Travolta, (Pope) John. American actor/religious appear at least 30 or 35. Hilarity ensues in the court- leader (1954- ), who began his career as one of room as a brilliant slapstick jurisprudence free-for-all the Sweathogs on TV's Welcome Back, Kotter and is breaks out between our heroes and the slime-dog law- now the supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic yers and mother and daughter cons. The melee spills Church. His Holiness is best remembered for his per- out onto the street, where Fatty is chased into a tragi- formances in Saturday Night Fever, Urban Cowboy, cally dead-ended career and Charlie is slapped with Grease, Stayin' Alive, Godfather III, and Rocky IV one of the most penurious statutory rape settlements (these last three directed by friend Sylvester Stallone). in the history of jurisprudence. In 1986 Not So Young The Bishop of Rome's last movie was Doug Fiegler's was remade in France by Roman Polanski ; music by musical Macbeth ; his dance scene with the invisible Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis , and Peter Yarrow. dagger is still considered a classic. It was during that Porky's 5: The Day After, 1986. Porky's gang migrates filming that His future Holiness first experienced the from Florida to Lawrence , Kansas, to find fun and frolic calling . As he described his spiritual longing to Bar- in the aftermath of an all-out nuclear exchange bara Walters: \" I was, like, empty.\" An unusually fast between the two superpowers. The kids play gags with rise through the echelons of the Catholic clergy led to corpses , drink radioactive beer, peer through a hole in his ascension to the diocese of Philadelphia in 1993. A the wall of the girls' shower to see them wash away year later the papal incumbent, John Paul II , suffered a parts of their bodies, and generally kick ash all over fatal heart attack while reading a smutty history of the Polish film industry, Wajda Blue ; and immediately the town . then-Cardinal Travolta became the first ever to actively Reagan, Ronald. American actor/governor/head of campaign for the Papacy, employing many of the state (1908-1991). In the middle of his second term of same media techniques pioneered by his friend , the office as President of the United States of America, late President Stallone. Plans are afoot for a movie to Reagan surprised the world when he stepped down in be made of His Holiness's life starring Scott Baio. order to act again: as Rhett Butler in the $60-million Velveeta City , 1988. The strange, surprisingly suc- sequel to Gone with the Wind, released as Passing of cessful film about one day in the life of a metropolis the Wind (1987) . made entirely out of the famous Kraft food product. We Scorsese, Martin. American director (1943- ), follow the activities of the likes of Sven Hossen, the known for his collaboration with actor Robert De Niro, wizardly financier who sits in his office, high atop a which peaked with Raging Bull (1980) and slid down- shimmering orange cheesy tower, and Turko the Geek, hill into their films of the late 1980s, Binky Boo the Kan- who slaves away in the milk tunnels , far below the city garoo (1988) and Le Pitot the Escargot (1989). streets, that keep the town humming. And for excite- Scottish Mafia films. A mainstay of the 1930s and ment, there is Clandento Tweel, the embittered, scan- 194Os, films about the Scottish Mafia experienced a dalized ex-mayor, who plots to turn up the domed city's dramatic revival in the 1980s. The craze for period temperature gauge and turn the entire quivering capi- films rekindled interest in the colorful McMafia, and tal into a sauce for broccoli. Upon release, director new realism was brought to the depiction of these Francis Ford Coppola stated, \" My film is processed kilted thugs. Gone were the 1940s cliches of machine cheese .\" guns in bagpipes and ubiquitous tartan three-piece Zadora, Pia. Accomplished American actress (1950- suits. The new films focused on the violence and cor- ruption that \" The Clan\" brought to the wool industry ) of the 1980s, generally regarded as the inter- and , controversially, Hollywood itself. Titles in the preter of Harold Robbins. In the words of one critic, genre included: MacGranddaddie, MacGranddaddie \" Sure, she can't act, sing , dance, or even look halfway Part Two (both directed by Francis Coppola), and Bring sentient. But she does know Robbins, and besides, Me the Haggis of Alfre Mae Woodard. her husband is so goddamn rich that I just love her.\" Spielberg, Steven. American writer/producer/ Zorba the Geek, 1987. The long-awaited sequel to the director (1947- ). Although tremendously suc- film of Kazantzakis' novel , again starring Anthony cessful with Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Quinn. As the story continues, Zorba gets his legs blown off by the explosives that destroy the guns of E. I , and the Indiana Jones films , Spielberg suffered Navarone. Unable to dance ever again , he ends up as the geek in a traveling circus , where he earns his daily an expensive failure with The Visit, which starred cup of retsina by biting the heads off chickens . Even Michael Jackson as a Cabbage Patch Kid from outer with bits of beak sticking to his lip, he exhorts the space . From then on , eschewing Hollywood , American dwarf who follows him around to \" let go and Spielberg began to make a series of small personal live.\" A rich testament to the joyous spirit. ~ films about people having their hearts ripped out. 75

How Green ~re Our Acres... by Armond White Grandview US.A, Places in the Heart, Wyatt and Billy put it in Easy Rider or Country, and The River, the farm and the Albert Brooks puts it in Lost in America), Fanaticism for old TV series may be Midwest took the place of urban centers and the films are as dull as Fifties TV the most characteristic trend of a decade as scenes of action. Perhaps the filmma- because of it. without its own identity and one in which kers presume that \"fundamental\" issues even nostalgia is made a second-hand (Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's trac- By comparison, the moral and ideolog- emotion through a longing for junk. The tor; Thou shalt harvest the crop on time) ical complications of Green Acres make a fondness for, and serious attention given are morally superior 'to the venal con- refreshing and avant-garde discovery. to, such shows as The Honeymooners, I cerns of city life. When Oliver Wendell Douglas (Eddie Love Lucy, and Leave It to Beaver surely Albert), our New York attorney, gets his isn't for their art; the skimpy formula of Evidently Sixties idealism about earthy pioneer wish to become an American those series seems neither t.o bother nor values has been not simply digested and farmer and moves to Hooterville with his matter to the viewers who esteem the immigrant socialite wife, the series acti- artificial, schematized view of the world Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor vates a comic spectacle of contr~sts as and, worst of all, the cliches of American retained; through Mel Gibson, Sam She- fascinating and self-referential as the character that those series preserve. pard, Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek, and moment in The Flamingo Kid when Scott Glenn (chic laborers courtesy of Richard Crenna's vulgar capitalist clashes Certainly a slow-take master like Jackie G. Q., Vogue, The Twilight Zone, and with the TV clip shown of Crenna as the Gleason has defined for recent genera- Soloflex) it has been chewed up and spit humble Luke in The Real McCoys. A tions the authentic American lumpen- out, it's meaning missed or reversed mixed-media frisson. rascal as well as W. C. Fields did in It's a much the way Jimmy Carter once did Gift. But the fact is Gleason's energies Dylan and Reagan recently did Spring- Green Acres constantly shakes up exploded the comic situations that steen. These movies cheat by putting received notions of what a TV series can seemed so ideal for him. The Honey- farmers on pedestals. None search for do; its oddball ideas of heroism, patriot- mooners series is paltry morally and tech- alternatives, for balance (\"for America; as i~'11., and sanity still ring true. While nically because it tames the frustration of Oliver Douglas isn't boorish, he is pom- American middle-class dreams that are pous-which the show refuses to judge. out of reach, pigeonholing them as Each of the 170 episodes (first televised quaint, bathetic. Ralph Kramden's aspira- from 1965 to 1971) coheres around some tions can be understood and slept over perspective or situation of a character's just as calmly as one can dismiss The behavior overwhelming convention and Beaver's prepubescent gaffes and Lucy's stereotype. Citified Oliver can't bring zanmess. sophistication to the countryside any bet- ter than he can grow corn. He's an idealist Once a cannabis cult favorite during in it. Hooterville already has its own the Seventies, Green Acres ranges out- brand of both. He's what the farm movies side the typical TV camp that assures would never allow, an idealist who needs viewers of their own omniscience and to adjust his horizons. control. Its current success-syndicated in nearly 50 markets-dovetails with and Paul Henning, Green Acres' executive matches in spunky weirdness the subcul- producer, first conceived the series as a ture comedy of Repo Man and recent thematic spinoff of his farm comedy hits, speed rock like \"I Will Dare\" by The The Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Replacements ; it is pop culture that Junction. Green Acres' reversal of those embraces the familiar but denies every successful formats was inspired. It both easy assumption. It also sold out all per- copped the counterculture fad and sati- formances of eight episodes last year at rized the bourgeoisie's intention to imi- the Kennedy Center in Washington. tate it. Surprisingly political, the series' story editor, Dick Chevillat, and writer, The appeal of Green Acres has come Jay Sommers, were too imaginative (and above ground, coincidentally or not, just maybe just too loose in the head) to flaunt as the movies seemed to hitch on to a the series' topicality. As a result Oliver national mood of dissatisfaction and often sparred with community leader- retreat. In last year's already exhausted ship: Washington bureaucracy pre- back-to-the-land mini-trend that Watergate was ridiculed in a number of included The Stone Boy, Footloose, episodes - best of all in the figure of the Hooterville county agent, Hank Kimball, 76

played by Alvy Moore. cia ted now whe n the investigation of NEW COMMUNITY CINEMA Green Acres wears much be tter th an com mon language and pe rcep ti o n is a regular and accepted practice. \"Langue\" WR ITER S WANTED FOR monthly film program reruns of those fatuou s Norman Lear not \"Iangage\" is th e only difference guide. FILM FOLI O. Ab le LO wrOte for gene ral series All in the Family, Maude , and between En Ra chachant (the Straub- audience on o ne or more : U.S .• Intematio nal. Good Times , which, like the cycle offarm Huillet-Duras linguistic divertissement) American Independe nt. Pieces ra nge fro m 500 to movies, won popularit y by c hoo s in g a nd the Green Acres pi cnic episo de 1000 words at SCpe r word . Writte n q ue ries must dubiously controversial (\"liberal\") atti- where Oliver buys a rubber pie as a decoy include sample . EW COMM U ITY C I EMA. tudes or else by going sentimental or for ants: In the next scene farmhand Eb Box 498. Huntington. N. Y. 11 743 playing dumb when issues were ambigu- (Tom Lester) recognizes the pie as one of ous. Archie Bunker may have set popular hi s moth e r's specia l di s hes, and later More of the country's premier collec- satire back 60 years when he became all Hank Kimb all se riou s ly defend s its tion of authentic film posters--rare, vintage, things to all people (bigot and buddy). delectability \"if you've got strong teeth ~ and contemporary-such as \"Gone with The effect was n't a deepening of TV Not just a vaudeville routine, this running the Wind,\" the original \" King Kong\" characterization but the acceptance and joke in which an object is variou sly conju- and \"Napoleon\"- Comprehensive domestication of the nation's troubles, gated, proves perception is relative. 8W' x 11\" catalog with more than 150 disguising a blind alley as a funhouse. highly collectible graphics , many in color! Imagine Archie in an all-white ghetto There are no boundaries. When Oliver Your opportunity now to own previously where the expected ethics are topsy- doubts that Li sa's father, the \"King of unavailable original movie posters. turvy, and you get a cosmic, burlesque, Hungary,\" had Mexican servants, she To receive your copy, send $6.00 to: dadaist ri c hnes s. It would outline the insists \"They vere vetbacks.\" The jokes in Cinemonde 1916-H Hyde Street, mixed signals and the jumble of thoughts Green Acres get farther out. Arnold Zif- San Francisco, CA 94109. and anxieties actually distinctive of the fel , the pig adopted as the so n of Fred and American polyglot , but it'd be beyond Doris Ziffel, is the best example of the 77 Norman Lear's ability to sustain. Green series' outrageousness growing artfully Acres sustained it pretty damned fre- from conveying the story of each episode quently, like a fountain of Duck Soup . to commenting on itself. In one two-part episode famous among the buffs, Arnold Unconsciously evoking the absurdist goes to Hollywood to become a TV star, dramatists Beckett and lonesco , the crea- taking over the lead role from a tempera- tors of Green Acres questioned the stabil- mental horse. Late into this fame-is-fleet- ity of the world and its comprehensibility ing saga the horse comes to Arnold, (unthinkable in series TV) , but in unpre- begging for a seco nd chance- he has to tentious terms that did not alarm the feed his famil y. The conversation appears American public . Plainly put: The won- in subtitles until Arnold, sensing the ani- der of the series is that craziness always mals' unwritten code of honor, magnani- makes sense. There's true if faint logic at mously gives in. \"C'es t la v ie ,\" he the core of every episode: When Oliver observes. takes Lisa on a picnic, it becomes neces- sary to include most of the townspeople. Smart aleck TV did not begin with Sat- Each uninvited guest brings something urday Night Live and is not all that rare extraneous-another person or an accor- (Laugh/n, Benny Hill) . But GreenAcres, dian. When Oliver finally complains that self-reflexiveness-both funny and dra- even a bum has brought along a tuba, the matically coherent- is extraordinary. response is the picnic could use a tuba . The combination of visual inventiveness, real and fake locations , hum an and ani- This is a comedy of whacked percep- mal performers, and the kazoo mu s ic tions best expressed in its play with lan- score is the product of freaky genius. Not guage. Oliver's befuddlement at the even Kuleshov, the theori st of creative description and explanation of things geography, could have improved on the reflect the central out-of-his-element pre- title sequence. It marries the lyrics ~You dicament. Eva Garbor's exotic and anach- are my wife/Good-bye city life\" to a visual ronistic prese nce as Oliver's wife saves of Oliver reaching out of the frame toward the simple premise from triteness. Her Lisa iii their Park Avenue penthouse and great contribution (the part was written pulling her across the splice, across for Martha Hyer, whose icy blondness space, to the farm . could have only made the comedy pre- dictable) isn't just her famous hotcakes A Grant Wood parody follows, showing but her additional linguistic confusion. the farmer husband and his reluctant wife Going past mere Gracie Allen mala- standing before their property, bouncing propisms, Gabor's Lisa is a naive struc- pitchfork in hand. Green Acres' surreal turalist to Oliver's pragmatist. Her trans- rationale is to capture the moment Amer- formation of ~shopping list\" to ~s hooping ican gothic turns American comic. The list\" bothers no one more than Oliver; current, excruciatingly neo-agrarian film- \"shooping\" is in fact a common phrase in makers (Mark Rydell, Robert Duvall , what Lisa pluralizes as \"Hootersville.\" and Jessica Lange) don't get that joke and Perhaps Green Acres is best appre- so become the butt of it. ®

READ THE CLASSICS • • • Timely... Provocative ... FILM COMMENT FILM ~.;>',:' - ~...'-'.·.f\".t.....\\ ....~-.. _-~'. ....T_.,.,-,.I... . . ' ..., Nov/Dec 1974 /.. ~. Film Noir Issue; Raymond Chandler; Sep/Oct 1973 2'-~. . . Max Ophuls May/June 1977 Nov/Dec 1977 King Vidor. PI. 2; Gangsters & G-Men; BertOlucci; Character Leo McCarev ; \"\" Actors; Michael Otis Fergu so ~ ANNIE HA LL Ritchie Jan/Feb 1974 Schrader's Yakuza- Eiga Primer; Resnais; Nora Sayre July/Aug 1980 Sep/Oct 1980 Nov/Dec 1980 March/April 1981 Ronald Reagan ; Peter Sellers; 3-D; \"Making It\" Barbara Stanwyck; Rednecks & Russ Peter O'Toole; Meyer; Michael Caine Jonathan Demme; Midsec tion; Sarris o n The Zoom by Mr. X SPOrts Movies Jess ica Lange March/Apri 1.1982 July/Aug 1982 Sep/Oct 1982 Nov/Dec 1982 Jan/Feb 1983 Roger Corman; Marilyn; Fassbinder; Selling a Script- GAN DHI; Video Games Genre Films; ROAD WARRI OR; Hawks; Comic Art ; The CASABLANCA Midsection; W.R. Paul Bartel Caper; Goldie Hawn; Burnett Paul Schrader Richard Pryor; Novel to Film BLADE RUNNER 11trii' Jan/Feb 1984 Mar/Apr 1984 May/June 1984 July/Aug 1984 IOOth Issue; Hitchcock; Jonathan Sergio Leone interview; Cary Grant ; T ERMS OF ENDEARM EN1: Demme & Talking Heads Toshiro Mifuni; Lost Hollywood YENTL Claudette Colbert; C inematOgraphers Sep/Oct 1984 Nov/Dec 1984 Jan/ Feb 1985 Mar/Apr 1985 Clint Eastwood ; Black Films; Rising Actresses; Pornography Debate ; PA SSAGE TO INDIA; Fanzines; Tavernier; Steve Dancing Moyies Martin Truffaut; TH Ec o rroN CLUB Celebrities

FILM COMMENT CLASSICS! .. .And On Sale! 111m film 111m C () ~ ov/Dec 1978 J an/ Feb 1979 March/ A pril 1979 Mav/June 1979 July/Aug 1979 Holl ywood Makeup; Philip Kaufman ; Movie Pa l.ces; Mi los Bo b Hope ; Je rry 1\"\\\" Iss ue: I' Ad,; Sidney Billy Wilder ; Forma n; Hitchcock Lewis ; Woodv Allen ; Lumet Sta r-M aki ng Geo rge Rom~ro Co mmercials \" 111m- Co medy, C arso n C () \\I\\I !:, \"I July/Aug 198 1 Sep/ Oct 198 L Nov/Dec 1981 Ja n/ Feb 1982 Geo rge Luc.s MGM Midsection ; Classic French Film: Art Director interv iew: RAIDF'R ; Movie Music; Terry Gilliam ; Mid ecti o n: REDS & Fassbinder; Kasdan In d e p e n d e n t s RAGTIME PFX; Jew in the Movies Iilm 111m m I \\I I, , \"I ~ March/ April 1983 May/June 1983 July/Aug 1983 Sep/ Oct 1983 Nov/Dec 1983 8~;TRAY L; O livier: \"Getting it Made:\" RETliRNOFTHEJED I: BlGCHII.L: Coppo la T il E. RIGHT !-.'nJFF; interview: Asian Italian Midsection Psyc hedel ic Movies ; Ul mer: MTV: John Mid cction Sam S he phe rd: .UPERMA ' III Waters: Kurys TF...'=>'TA{\\·IENT BUY A BUNCH! 5 issues for $12.00! $2.00 each additional issue (Buy A Bunch limited to U.S. orders only) _ _ Sep/Oct '73 _ _ Jul /Aug '80 _ _ \"ep/Oct 'S2 _ _ May/June 'S4 COMMENT _ _ Jan/ Feb '74 _ _ Sep/Oct 'SO _ _ Nov / D ec 'S2 _ _ July/Aug 'S4 _ _ Nov/ Dec '74 _ _ Nov / Dec 'SO _ _ Jan / Feb 'S3 _ _ Sep /Oct '84 _ _ May/June '77 _ _ M ar/Ap r 'S I __ Mar/Apr'S3 _ _ NovlDec 'S4 _ _ Jul /Aug'SI _ _ M ay /June 'S3 _ _ Jan / Feb 'S5 ov/ D ec '77 _ _ Sep/Oct 'S I _ _ Ju IlAug 'S3 _ _ Mar /Apr 'S5 _ _ I\" ov/ Dec '78 _ _ Nov / D ec 'S I _ _ Sep/Oct 'S3 _ _ Men with th e _ _ Jan/Feb '79 _ _ Jan/ Feb 'S2 _ _ ov/ Dec '83 __ Mar/Apr '79 _ _ Mar /Apr 'S2 _ _ Jan/ Feb 'S4 Movie Cameras _ _ May/June '79 _ _ Jul /Aug'S2 __ Mar/Apr'S4 (fil mograp hy of _ _ Jui /Aug '79 7S cinemam- graphersl [1 972J If any of the issues I have ordered arc no longe r available, please send me one of NA~ I E _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ these cwo al ternatives: ADD RESS _______________________________________________________ ______________ or _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ The I DEX SETS for FII I COMMENT, Volumes 1-20 , listing every article ever C ITY _______________________________________________________________ published in FILM COMMENT, are ava ilable for S3\"00/seL QUANTITY AMOUNT STATE Z IP _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ Back issues of FILM COMM~XI: S3\"00/issue !\\ _ _'--_ S _ _ __ _ _ _ .5 issues for $12 \"00: S2 ,OO/add itional issue M3il with check or money order to: FILM COMM ENT CLASSICS $; _ _ __ _ _ _ Index SCIS, S3\"00/se t 140 West 65[h Street S _ __ New York , NY 10023 TOTAL

Quiz #13: Boys and Girls Together QUIZ #13: For all you listomaniacs out many of you put into your submissions- Scott, Frank D. Gilroy, Joe E. Brown, Darryl there, here's another challenge to your perse- don't you people have anything better to do? F. Zanuck, Edward G. Robinson, Joseph H. verance and your reference books. Assemble Biggest challenge was to fmd ftlm folk with the the longest list you can of ftlms whose titles Lewis, Bert I. Gordon, LeeJ. Cobb, William contain the first, last, or full names of male middle initial \"l! (Danish director Peter U. and female characters: e.g., Bonnie and Gad, actor Alfredo U. Weys, and an actress K. Howard, Jack L. Warner, Robert M. Clyde. Names, please, not terms of address Young, Paul N. Lazarus III, David O. (no Mr. and Mrs. Smith), and from feature with the cunning cognomen Donna U. Selznick, Arthur P. Jacobs, Anna Q. Nilsson, ftlms only (though TV movies are allowed). Wanna). Fifteen readers found all 26 intitials. Frank R. Pierson, Haing S. Ngor, Craig T. Longest list of correct titles wins ~ free year of A sample ballot, from a constant reader in Nelson, Peter U. Gad, Michael V. Gazzo, FILM COMMENr, if there's a tie, we1J draw a Hoboken, NJ (not Frank Sinatra): William Howard W Koch, Jr., Francis X. Bushman, winner at random. All entries must be A. Fraker, Cecil B. DeMille, George C. received at our office, 140 West 65th Street, Sarah Y Mason, Sanluel Z. Arkoff. New York, N.Y 10023, by June 10. Good luck to all! We dipped our hand into the FILM COM- On QUIZ #12 you ,,,ere asked to provide MENT bin and came up with a humungous the names of 26 actors, directors, producers, or screenwriters, each with a different middle envelope from George Somers of Aberdeen, initial. Once again we were gratifted, and a lit- tle troubled, by the meticulous research so NJ Mr. Somers had compiled an entry com- prising 349 names - the defmitive spadework for anyone contemplating a Ph.D. (or Peter H. Duchin) thesis on the subject. Mr. Somers gets a free year of the magazine. Congrats to R.c.him and thanks to all who participated.- CONTRffiUlDRS PHOTO CREDITS other people picked a majority of this year's Pat Aufderheide is a contributing editor ABC Motion Pictures: p. 53, 55, 57, 59, Academy Award winners. Andrew Sarris at In These Times. Gideon Bachman is 60. Atlantic Releasing: p. 14 (2). Cine- (who's feeling better, bless him) had seen the veteran film journalist, based in lon- com International: p. 41 (3). The Cinema almost none of the ftlms in serious contention don. Paul Budra writes funny out of L.A. Guild: p. 49 ,-50. Yara Cluver: p. 62 (3), and still got five of the top ten categories right. Guillermo Garcia Infante is the Cuban 63 (1). Crossover Films: p. 46. Courtesy The ten sages we called upon did even better; novelist and critic; he lives in London. FilmFest Berlin: p. 2. Les Films du they averaged 75 percent correct. David Carol Cooper is a contributor to The Vil- Losange and Antenne 2: p. 48. Hungaro Ansen, Stephen Schiff, and Anne Thompson lage Voice. Enrique Fernandez is a Voice Film: p. 22, 23, 24. Icarus Films: p. 39 hit nine of ten on the nose; Gregg Kilday and staff writer. Leonardo Garcia Tsao is a (1),41 (1). Courtesy George Lucas: p. 74 Peter Rainer had eight; Stuart Byron and film critic who lives in Mexico City. Bren- (5). MGM/UA: p. 6, 15 (2), 27 (2), 45, 35 Dale Pollock seven; and Harlan Jacobson, dan Gill is the New lbrkers theater critic (1). Movie Star News: p. 12. Museum of Richard Schickel, and Kenneth Turan six. and a prominent force for architectural pres- Modern Art/Film Stills Archive: p. 25, The secret: when in doubt, vote for Ama- ervation. J. Hoberman is a Village Voice 27 (2), 29 (1) (2), 32 (1). New Line Cin- deus. Perhaps next year will provide a tougher film critic. Bill Landis is the editor of ema: p. 20. New Yorker Films: p. 31, 41 challenge. Sleazoid Express. Marc Mancini has (2). Orion: p. 39 (2). Andy Schwartz: p. masterminded a state-of-the-art language 16 (1) (2), 17, 18, 21. David Socher: p. 13. FILMS IN REVIEW lab in Los Angeles. Michael Sragow is Leonardo GarCia Tsao: p. 36, 37 (1) (2), film critic of the Boston Phoenix. Jim Ver- 38. 20th Century Fox: p. 15, 75 (2). If you like movies, you 'll love Films in niere is a New Jersey writer. Beverly United Film: p. 8. Universal: p. 27 (1), 74 Review. $16.00 a year. Sample copy Walker writes screenplays and journalism (1) (2) (6). Warner Bros.: p. 14 (1), 33. $1.00. Dept. B, Box 589, New York in L.A. Armand White writes for City 10021 Sun, the Voice, and us. Graham Yost's OSCAR UPD.ATE. Three cheers for previous piece was on Ghostbusters. the experts! Two cheers, anyway: plenty Pin· Ups • Portraits • Posters • Physique IT'S RTS FOR EVER HEARD of a comprehensive screenplay Poses • Pressbooks • Western • Horror • SOUNDTRACKS & VIDEO MOVIES! evaluation for $25.007 You have now-right Science Fiction • Musicals • Color Photos • here. Also, we NEED scriptwriters and sub- 80 Years of Scenes From Motion Pictures 1,000,000 inventory. Rarellimited edition soundtracks, scribers for the AMERICAN SCREENWRITER. and largest selection in video (from \"G\" to \"X\", and at Write GPI, Box 67, Manchaca, TX 78652. Rush $1 .00 FOR OUR ILLUSTRATED BROCHURE lowest prices!). Soundtrack catalog: $1 OR Video cat- aI09-$1. RlS, Dept. 23A, Box 1829, Novato, CA 134 WEST 18th STREET, DEPT. FC 94948. Phone: (415) 883-2179. Soundtrack Value· NEW YORK, N.Y. 10011 guide: $5.50. (212) 620-8160·61 80



A world offlavor in an ultra light.