Tales of OdieNary Madness

Noir City X #4: Rita Hayworth and San Fran Redemption

2012-01-30T20:06:00.000-05:00

by Odienator

Today’s post focuses on a trifecta of female names, all ending in –a and enmeshed in some sort of trouble.

Nothing Bonnie About Bedelia

First up, 1946’s British import, Bedelia, based on Vera Caspary’s novel. I must disclose that I arrived 30 minutes late for Bedelia, but had I arrived on time, I doubt it would have helped. Bedelia tells a Black Widow-esque story of a woman who murders men for money. She uses a little vial of poison to kill ‘em, but the actress who plays Bedelia, Margaret Lockwood, could have used her acting. It’s as if Susan Hayward’s worst bouts of onscreen mania grew a British accent and swam across the pond. Maybe I missed something with my late arrival, so please apply a grain of salt to this paragraph. This was a festival favorite of several people.

“They Sent Me the Script, Not the Score”

Caspary’s more famous novel, Laura, fares better in the hands of director Otto Preminger and composer David Raksin, though Caspary is on record as disliking the script. Czar of Noir Eddie Muller and Dana Andrews’ daughter, Susan, introduced the screening to us eager fans of Otto’s warped perversions. Preminger’s mischievous fingerprints are all over this one, with a salaciousness so thinly veiled it approaches neon sign brightness. His middle finger to the Production Code starts with our introduction to columnist Waldo Lydecker. His middle aged visage greets the viewer, and lead actor Dana Andrews, from his bathtub. Lydecker’s naughty bits are covered by the source of his venom, his typewriter. “Hand me that towel,” he asks the detective, and as Andrews hands one offscreen, watch his eyes and his reaction. Preminger is clearly fucking with Fox studio head Darryl Zanuck here, for when Preminger cast well-known homosexual stage actor Clifton Webb, Zanuck told Otto “the audience is going to think this guy’s gay!” Preminger replied “Duh!”

There’s a lot of sexual weirdness in Laura, and I wonder how much of it hit audiences in 1944. For starters, Andrews’ Detective MacPherson falls in love with Laura (Gene Tierney), whose murder he is investigating. From “beyond the grave” Laura holds court over her apartment via a gorgeous, large painting over the mantle, seducing MacPherson as he tries to uncover her mysterious death. In flashback, Lydecker tells the copper how he crafted Laura’s personality and image for the masses (and for himself). He helps Laura get a job and spends as much time as possible with her, which just seems weird. Through his column, he obsessively destroys any man who gets too close to Laura, yet she appears to have no sexual interest in him and, to be honest, I think the feeling is mutual. In his mind and his loins, Lydecker can’t have her, so nobody else will.

Vincent Price’s unfaithful Shelby Carpenter did have Laura, and despite Lydecker’s attempts, it appeared Laura was going to marry Carpenter before her murder. Laura had competition from cougar Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson), who made her rivalry for Carpenter blatantly, publicly clear. Laura’s murder paves the way for Treadwell to go after Carpenter, the number one suspect in Laura’s murder.

MacPherson also wants Laura, death be damned, and his quiet investigation of the apartment is a subtle piece of erotica created by Andrews. Andrews is silent, letting his face and body language communicate with us. Of this scene, Andrews’ daughter said it was her favorite piece of acting by her father. “He’s sniffing her lingerie drawer,” she said. And he looks great doing it; Muller correctly pointed out that “nobody wore a trenchcoat and hat better than Dana Andrews.”

I should stop describing the plot, as it has a big reveal I won’t spoil, and focus on the mood Laura evokes with its acting, atmosphere and score. Webb’s Lydecker is an incredible bitch. Snarky, snooty and vindictive, Webb treats his great one-liners like daggers, stabbing his way to a well-deserved Oscar nomination. He’s fun to watch, but I wouldn’t want to spend 5 minutes with Waldo Lydecker in real life. Andrews allows vulnerability to peer through his macho detective’s tough exterior. Tierney is radiant, mysterious, and less a victim than the murder mystery plotline might indicate. Preminger's direction evokes a moody, haunted sense of loss and mystery.

The actors are first rate, but the real star of Laura is its music. David Raksin’s famous theme is haunting shorthand for unattainable love. Johnny Mercer’s lyrical additions made the theme even more famous and beloved. Laura is worth seeing for the score alone; its effect fueled many an actresses’ regret over turning down the part. When asked for her response after seeing Laura, Hedy Lamarr famously said “they sent me the script, not the score.”

Putting the Blame on Mame

I must confess I’ve never been able to make heads nor tails of Gilda’s plot. I also cop to finding the film a tad too long, with one too many acts of cruelty leveled at its titular character. These sins are always forgiven as soon as Rita Hayworth makes her entrance. I shudder every time she, to quote Red In The Shawshank Redemption, “does that shit with her hair.” “Gilda, are you decent?” asks her husband. “Who, me?” asks Hayworth, and a hundred thousand men’s hearts—gay and straight—skipped a few beats. Despite the current cinema’s ability to show more than just some hottie tossing her hair, Gilda’s entrance remains one of the sexiest moments onscreen. It must have fueled a lot of post-war teenagers’ erotic dreams in 1946.

Columbia head Harry Cohn wanted a vehicle to make Rita Hayworth a sex symbol, and director Charles Vidor delivers. Hayworth’s passionate, tumultuous chemistry with co-star Glenn Ford keeps the temperature at a near boil. Vidor cranks up the gas burner by turning everything visual into a sexual motif. Had the censor been even remotely privy to what Vidor was slipping under the radar, he would have burned the negative. Some of the dialogue is also so thinly coded I wonder if people really were more innocent back then.

Sneaky sex stuff or no, Gilda has enough above the surface steam heat to get the juices flowing. When Hayworth sings her signature number, Put the Blame on Mame, her gyrations bring credence to the lyrics: Mame caused all manner of disasters, including the Great Chicago Fire, just by being so damn hot. I say that Hayworth sings the number, but after this viewing, I learned that Hayworth was dubbed by Anita Ellis. Learning this took a little bloom off the rose, but Hayworth sells it so well I can easily forgive all.

Corinthian Leather and Swedish Bombshells

Gilda appeared on a double bill with 1965’s The Money Trap. Reteaming a much older Ford and Hayworth, The Money Trap tries to rekindle some of the nostalgia and romance of seeing the former Gilda stars together onscreen. I was more taken by Hayworth’s performance than any moments she has with Ford. Her role is smaller than advertised, but she brings such pathos to it. I loved her working class accent, her drunk scenes, and her ability to still be sexy without trying to appear younger than she is. There’s more than a shade of Thelma Ritter to the role, which is certainly not an insult.

Hayworth emerges unscathed from The Money Trap’s problems. Her Gilda costar is not so lucky. Ford is teamed with Elke Sommer, a much younger actress whose marriage to Ford seems more than just a little icky. Not that an older Ford is unattractive, it’s just the relationship’s logistics are too much of a stretch for me. Sommer’s character, however, is the catalyst for The Money Trap’s heist plot. Ford’s a cop who, while investigating the self-defense murder of a safecracker by Joseph Cotten, figures out that Cotten’s hiding some serious Mob money. Ford’s partner, Ricardo Montalban, wants in on the heist, which Ford pulls in order to bring home the bacon for his high-maintenance wife.

Since this is a Noir festival, you can predict that this heist isn’t going to end happily. Cotten is a lot smarter than he appears—after all, he WAS Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt—and that whole “honor amongst thieves” thing clouds judgment yet again. I was underwhelmed by The Money Trap, but it’s worth seeing for both Hayworth’s performance and a gun battle between two 1940’s icons. Oh, and a pre-Khan Montalban doesn’t hurt either, even if parts of his performance feel as fake as Corinthian Leather.

Next time, some of the more obscure pictures at Noir City X, including Alan Ladd’s turn in The Great Gatsby and a reteaming of Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet and another troublesome idol. Slowly but surely, I’m catching up!

Noir City X #3: Boo Time for Bonzo

2012-01-26T19:46:00.001-05:00

by Odienator

(Ed. Note: Many of the images are coming from the Noir City website. Please go visit it! We'll feel less guilty.)

My apologies, dear readers, for being behind on these updates. But the weather’s been wonderful here in San Francisco. My days are full of roaming the parks, Chinatown and the Embarcadero. My nights have been far too racy for the Production Code—can’t tell you anything more about that. We don’t BLEEP and tell here at Tales of Odienary Madness (at least not for free).

My evenings, however, are open for discussion. So let’s continue where I left off last time. I was about to discuss Saturday’s Evening Matinee, featuring Angie Dickinson as the guest interviewee.

Saturday Evening Post #1: Ronald Reagan Was A Crook

In this movie, I mean! After all, his character says “I approve of larceny; homicide is against my principles.”

(Lightning strikes Odie)

The first film of the Angie Dickinson double feature was 1964’s The Killers. Shot in “glorious color” by Don Siegel--and shot up repeatedly by cinematic badass Lee Marvin—The Killers is even less faithful to the Hemingway short story than the 1946 version. Both featured Virginia Christine, who in this version ushers us into the intense level of violence we’ll be privy to for the duration. As a blind woman at a School for the Blind, poor Ms. Christine is brutally manhandled by Marvin. Scenes like this were the reason The Killers, originally made for NBC, wound up on the big screen instead.

Hitmen Charlie Strom (Lee Marvin) and Lee (Clu Galagher) arrive at the school to rub out Johnny North (John Cassavetes). When North is confronted, he just stands there and eats hot lead. This unnatural reaction bothers Strom, who believes “the only man that's not afraid to die is the man that's dead already.”

Strom’s curiosity, and his knowledge about the hit, leads him to do some research. Johnny North was a racecar driver who doublecrossed the wrong people. Strom and Lee visit North’s former partner to shake out details. The partner, played by Sheriff Lobo himself, Claude Akins, takes us into the first of the many flashbacks that populate The Killers. This is an oddly constructed picture, with flashback after flashback, sometimes within flashbacks.

But you don’t care about any of that shit. You wanna know about Angie and Ronnie. Johnny North falls for Angie’s gorgeous Sheila Farr. She appeals to the hyper-machismo inside a certain kind of man, and North’s common sense immediately goes South when he spots her. She loves money and nice things, and wears her “gold digger” label as if she were sung by Kanye West. North falls head over heels for her, but like the Iran-Contra scandal, she belongs to Ronald Reagan.

Ronnie’s the heavy in this picture, the mastermind of a million dollar robbery for which Johnny North is hired to drive. The details are just too good for any liberal not to enjoy. Reagan and company rob a government organization of $1 million. He also gets kicked out of a moving car, has a climactic gun fight with Lee Marvin, slaps the everlasting gobstopper shit out of Ms. Dickinson and puts out that hit on Oliver, I mean Johnny, North. The audience booed our 40th President, and I’d like to say it’s because he’s so damn good in the role (which he is). But the audience booed his screen credit! I won’t even talk about what happened when Marvin shot Reagan.

Everyone turns in fine work, with Cassavetes and Dickinson standing out. Cassavetes carefully calibrates his conflicted feelings about Sheila Farr; he knows she’s bad news but the boy can’t help himself. He thinks he can change her ways with love, and when he fails, he’s more than willing to meet his Maker at the end of Charlie Strom’s silencer. As Farr, Dickinson is sexy as hell, reviving the femme fatale for 60’s audiences. Her last scene with Marvin has one of the best kiss-off lines violent cinema has to offer. As Farr tries to explain to Charlie Strom why she’s doublecrossed everybody for that $1 million (including him), the dying Marvin looks at her and says, “Lady, I just don’t have the time.” BLAM!!

After this feature, Czar of Noir Eddie Muller interviewed Pepper Anderson in front of a very appreciative Castro Theater crowd. She was a great interview, funny, full of anecdotes about both films shown that night, and she looked pretty damn good to be 80. I took some zoomed-in pics with my Blackberry, but its camera is a piece of shit. I should post one pic to give you an idea of how bad the blasted thing is. I regret not bringing my actual camera.

Of Reagan, Dickinson noted that he was horrified to have to hit her in the movie, even if it were pantomimed. He was not too keen on playing the villain, a role he only assayed once onscreen. “Every time I saw him,” Dickinson said, “he’d say to me (in Reagan voice) ‘I was so glad I didn’t hit you!’” Despite their political views, she said she and her co-star got along famously on-set. Dickinson also mentioned that, during the making of The Killers, JFK was assassinated. She cited the scene that was supposed to be recorded that day, but that detail escapes me now.

Escape was the order of the day at the beginning of the next feature, which begins with Lee Marvin escaping the Grim Reaper.

Saturday Evening Post #2: Not that Keanu Reeves movie. That’s Point BREAK.

Dickinson expressed her love of Lee Marvin, a man she said was as tough as he was onscreen, but also a joy to work with in both features. “He sure knew how to take a beating,” she said, alluding to the most famous scene in John Boorman’s 1967 film Point Blank. It too has an odd, almost avant-garde construction, at least in its opening acts. The film hops back and forth in time, with Marvin suffering all manner of bad luck in his personal life, including being shot by his partner in crime. Honor amongst thieves is a common mistake amongst thieves, but Marvin’s going to get what was promised to him, even if it kills him and everybody else.

Like the psychotic paperboy in Better off Dead (“I WANT MY TWO DOLLARS!!!”), Lee Marvin’s Walker wants his money. Walker even says “I want my ninety-three thousand dollars!!!” or damn close to it. That’s all he wants, and to get it, he’ll have to go through John Vernon, Lloyd Bochner, James B. Sikking and Archie Bunker. Carroll O’Connor turns in a memorable performance as one of the no-nonsense criminals Walker hits up for his dough. "Good Lord!", says O’Connor, “do you mean to say you'd bring down this immense organization for a paltry $93,000?" Walker will do it, and he’ll use any means he can, including his sister-in-law, Chris (Dickinson). He sends her to get fresh with the guy who double crossed him in the Alcatraz heist that fills Marvin full of lead.

That guy, Mal Reese (Vernon) has a warped sex scene with an unwilling Chris. She’s there as the Trojan Horse that allows Walker to get past an Alcatraz-like amount of guards. Unfortunately for Walker, this turns into the first instance of butt-naked defenestration ever put onscreen. (Actually, it’s butt-naked roof tossing. –Ed.) This leads Walker up the chain of command in his pursuit of that elusive $93,000. It also leads to that famous scene, where Chris beats Walker mercilessly in a fury. Marvin stands there while Dickinson wails on him over and over and over. It goes on forever, and as Dickinson falls to the floor in a spent heap, Marvin walks away, sits down and turns on the TV.

The audience went berserk, applauding wildly for Ms. Dickinson. She was right. Badass Lee Marvin knows how to take a beating.

Alas, I do not know how to take a beating, though I certainly deserve one for my slow postings. Again, lo siento.

By the way: If my synopsis sounded familiar to you, except you saw Mel Gibson in your head instead of Lee Marvin, then you saw this movie. If it sounded familiar, but you were holding a book, then you read this novel by Donald Westlake's Richard Stark.

I’ll be back later to talk about Mr. Belvidere versus that mean woman from Leave Her to Heaven. Oh, and Rita. Gorgeous, hair-tossing Rita…

Noir City X #2: Pre-Code Corruption And A Welcome Cheat

2012-01-23T21:06:00.000-05:00

by Odienator

Day 2 of Noir City X consisted of two different double features. The matinee showcased “Proto-Noirs,” two black and white pre-Code films from Universal Pictures. The prime time twofer delivered brightly colored films from the decade the Hays Code became irrelevant, the 1960’s. For the latter, the Castro Theater welcomed Angie Dickinson to the stage to dish on Lee Marvin, Frank Sinatra, John Boorman, Brian DePalma and much of her TV and film output. A certain former President also appeared Saturday night, and his reception marked a first for me at Noir City.

But I’m jumping ahead. Let’s start with the daily double.

Daily Double Feature Top Half: Walter Winchell: CrimeStopper

Okay, America is the name of both the radio program and the film in which it appears. Lew Ayres is cast as a Walter Winchell clone out to save a kidnapped heiress from the Mob. Ayers’ Larry Wayne mirrors Winchell’s ties with the Mob and his patriotic slant, and the film gives him a hero’s welcome and all the sharpest lines of dialogue. The similarities are at times so striking that I wondered why they didn’t cast Winchell himself. Then I saw the ending.

Wayne decides to help Secretary John Drake (Gilbert Emery), the President’s best friend and Cabinet member, after his daughter Ruth is snatched by the most powerful mobster in America. This guy wants to use her to blackmail the President of the United States. This being 1932, I assume the film is talking about Herbert Hoover, whose own daughters would have made much more persuasive kidnapped pawns, that is, if he had any. “Hoover” makes an appearance late in the film, and is upstaged by Wayne’s über-patriotic speech to him. No wonder the Obit guy in the newsroom nicknames Wayne “Ego.”

In the newsroom, Sheila Barton (Maureen O’Sullivan) takes dictation for Wayne’s columns, but she’d rather just be taking the first syllable of dictation from him. Since this is before the Hays Code, Sullivan can be more verbally explicit about her desires, and Ayres can slap her on the keyster before telling her to marry the fiancé with whom she’s shacking up. “You’ve never even tried to kiss me,” Sheila tells Wayne. Whether he does, I’ll leave for you to discover. I can tell you that the ass slap was his idea.

Using his column, his radio show and his quick wit, Wayne manages to outsmart both the coppers and the capos. The latter are played by veteran actors Edward Arnold and Louis Calhern. Calhern is no stranger to Noir City: two years ago, he uttered one of the great noir lines through the speakers of the Castro Theater: “Crime is only... a left-handed form of human endeavor.” Here, both Calhern’s hands are criminal. Wayne is so charismatic and so powerful that the Mob trusts him at his word rather than shooting him on sight. This allows him to execute his plan to save Ruth Drake. As I said last time, honor amongst thieves is a common mistake amongst thieves.

It must have been pretty ballsy in 1932 to have a plotline featuring the blackmailing of the President as a plot point, but Okay, America uses it as a springboard for its “You Can’t Mess With the U.S.” message. I cringed at the film’s stereotypical Harlem nightclub scene, but it shows where Wayne gets most of his juicy gossip and criminal information. And as heavy-handed as this handjob to Winchell gets (and Wayne’s last line is a real credibility-stretcher—how can he talk after all that shit?), Okay, America remains entertaining, Its message must have reassured its original Depression-era audience while making a martyr of its real-life inspiration. Unfortunately, Okay, America is not on DVD.

Daily Double Feature Bottom Half: Please Don’t Kill That Bellhop

Afraid to Talk cheats by doing something dramatically dishonest, and I couldn’t bring myself to fault it. I was happy it cheated, as I’m sure audiences in 1932 were. This is a bleak picture, housing a hopeless, crushing sense of defeat by political corruption. It says a corrupt political machine will stop at nothing to cover its ass including, but not limited to, the blackmail, conviction and murder of an innocent man. In Albert Maltz and George Sklar’s play, Merry Go Round, everyone you’re supposed to trust is dirty. The cops are dirty, the D.A. is dirty, the Mayor is dirty. That last one caused problems when the play was presented in New York City. Then NYC Mayor Jimmy Walker felt like Hamlet’s father when he saw Merry Go Round--it was more dynamite than “DYN-O-MITE!” because Walker was just as corrupt as the play’s mayor. Walker kept putting up roadblocks, but the play was eventually staged. Walker himself was run out of town on a rail by Hoover’s successor the same year this movie premiered.

Afraid to Talk’s unfortunate victim (and stand-in for us) is a bellhop named Eddie Martin. Eddie is young, in love, and excited to have been chosen to be Mafioso Jig Skelli’s bellhop for the evening. Skelli is played by Edward Arnold who, along with Louis Calhern, is making his second appearance on our bill. Eddie’s job is to deliver food and booze to Skelli, and to enjoy the massive tip he’ll earn for being available. Unfortunately, Eddie’s in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he witnesses Skelli’s execution. The assassins shoot Eddie too, but he survives. The cops get him to finger the assassins, even though he’s smart enough to know he shouldn’t squeal. “You can trust us,” he’s told.

Don't listen, Eddie!

The hit was an inside job. Assistant D.A. John Wade (Calhern, who is great here) is all ready to cement his ascendancy to the Governor’s Mansion by bringing down Skelli’s organization. That is, until Jig’s brother Joe (Matt McHugh) gets all Richard “Dimples” Fields on him: He’s got papers on Wade, and everyone else in the Mayor’s cabinet is implicated in those papers. Joe’s ready to go public, because inquiring minds will love to hear how the Mayor’s in bed with the Mob. Especially during this election year!

Things get really messy for Wade and company, and they need a scapegoat. They decide to railroad Eddie Martin. Martin had been given a job in New York City as a result of his heroism in fingering the guilty, but now that same act is about to get him wrongfully convicted of murder. He’s arrested just as he and his girl are about to catch the train to NYC, and the cops give him the third degree. With this sequence, director Edward Cahn creates perhaps the most effective scene of his career. Beginning with a scene involving a swinging interrogation-room light, Cahn is relentless in the brutality visited Eddie Martin. Again, this is pre-Code, so the offscreen agony with which Martin screams and begs is stunning. After being beaten for hours, Eddie confesses. Even the guys doing the beating are sickened by the level of punishment they’ve inflicted.

Eddie Martin is a nice guy in this movie, and as stand-in for the common man that is we, his torture is tough to witness. In a short amount of time, Eric Linden brings an optimism and a likeability to Eddie. So when Wade, against his better judgment, sends Eddie to the hospital to be treated, and the doctor realizes what’s been done and calls a big-time, hotshot lawyer (Gustav von Seyffertitz), the audience breathes a sigh of relief. Wade and the mayor realize their mistake and decide to have Eddie murdered in his jail cell. They’ll make it look like a hanging.

The jail people are corrupt too, leaving the cell doors open so some other criminals can enter Eddie’s cell. “Oh come on,” I thought. “Please don’t kill that bellhop.”

Eddie is hanged, and at this moment, I felt the air leave the room at the Castro. The bad guys—these rich, corrupt bastards who feel a lot like today’s politicians—were going to win. As this was occurring, the film cross-cuts between doctors coming to Eddie’s cell and the activity therein. When they get to the cell, the shadow of Eddie’s body is shown. The camera follows the doctors into the room, and there’s a shot of Eddie’s bare feet as he hangs. Cahn draws our attention to this, and I could have sworn his feet were still moving, not just swinging. I wrote it off as wishful thinking. The film gives the correct impression that Eddie is dead. He’d have to be one tough S.O.B. to hang that long and live, and as horrible as Eddie’s death is, it made perfect dramatic sense in a film as black as this.

Remember when I said the movie cheated? And I was glad it did.

Eddie survives, and while the film provides some satisfaction and revenge for all Eddie’s troubles, Afraid to Talk doesn’t let us off the hook. Even with that optimistic last minute save, the ending reminds us that you can run corruption out of town on a rail, but there’s always a bigger criminal on the next train into town.

Speaking of trains into town, I need to hop the Muni to get to tonight’s Rita Hayworth features. (Rita—hubba HUBBA!) So, Angie and Ronnie Reagan will have to wait until next time. Pre-Code movies aren’t the only cheaters in this entry today. Mea Culpa! I'll be back.

Everybody's Guilty: Odienator in Noir City

2012-01-21T21:31:00.000-05:00

by Odienator

Once again, the Odienator finds himself in the company of thieves, femme fatales, easy victims and suckers greasing their own slippery slide into the gutter. No, I’ve not gone back to my old neighborhood! I’m at The Film Noir Preservation’s Noir City Film Festival in San Francisco. I covered the fest in 2010 for Slant Magazine’s House Next Door, and I had so much fun I had to return. This year marks the tenth anniversary of Noir City, and once again, the spectacular Castro Theater in San Francisco is hosting it.

To celebrate this milestone, Czar of Noir Eddie Mueller has come up with 26 movies celebrating the darker side of human nature on film. I plan to cover all 26 in some fashion over the next several days. As always, some of these films are not on DVD and more than a few are curiosity pieces I can’t wait to feast my eyes on. Next Saturday’s screening of The Great Gatsby, for example, is on my must-see list. There is also a big 1940’s style bash entitled “Everyone Comes to Eddie’s” that I will be attending. If you’ve ever wanted to see yours truly dolled up as a detective-slash-gangster, this will be your chance.

A great time will be had by all, and since noir is my favorite genre of film, I expect to be in Heaven until January 29^th.

Last night, Noir City X opened with a festival tradition of San Francisco-based noirs. 1951’s The House On Telegraph Hill and 1947’s Dark Passage. The former features Valentina Cortese 23 years before her Oscar-nominated turn in Truffaut’s superb Day for Night, the latter features Bogie and Betty Bacall in a strange, fascinating and twisty tale of plastic surgery, murder, and a really pissed off Endora from TV’s Bewitched.

Let’s start with The House on Telegraph Hill. Directed by Robert Wise and shot on location in San Francisco, Hill tells the tale of a Holocaust survivor Victoria (Cortese) who impersonates her best friend Karin after Karin dies. Karin’s infant son, Chris, was sent to America to live with her aunt before the Nazis imprisoned her. After Germany surrenders, Victoria sends a cable to Karin’s aunt, only to find out that the aunt is deceased. Eventually, she winds up in the titular San Francisco domicile, where she meets Chris, now 10, his governess Margaret (Fay Baker) and Alan Spender (Richard Basehart), the man who looked after Aunt Sophie before she gave up the ghost.

Shot by veteran cin-togger, Lucien Ballard, House on Telegraph Hill tosses in elements of Rebecca, Gaslight and any movie featuring a large amount of bequeathed money and a group of people waiting in line for that money. Wise enjoys twisting the tale for us, with seemingly villainous intentions turning into noble ones and vice versa. Cortese is excellent, and quite fetching, but I really got a kick out of Baker’s Margaret. This extreme blonde feels like Mrs. Danvers from Rebecca’s daughter, and for a while she and the film keep you guessing on what her intentions are. Throw in some truly suspenseful sequences involving explosions and a cut brake line on a car speeding down one of San Francisco’s patented hills, and you have a genuinely entertaining flick.

Speaking of Mrs. Danvers, Agnes Moorehead joins Bogie and Baby in 1947’s Dark Passage, the film that opened this year’s festival. And as expected, she’s mean as hell. Shot in San Francisco, Passage does something I hadn’t seen before in a film of this era. The first act is told from Bogie’s character’s point of view, using a startling amount of first-person subjective camerawork by director Delmer Daves. We don’t see Bogie until at least 25 minutes into the picture. We hear him, see his hands and even his silhouette, but not the actor himself. This lends a Being John Malkovich air to the proceedings—you are Bogie—and when Lauren Bacall looks directly into the camera and talks to us, it’s really, really sexy.

The plot is too involved to get into, but this is one wickedly crafted noir. We are kept in the dark about character’s intentions for much of the film, and there is almost a horror-movie element in the film’s plastic surgery subplot. (“I can make a fella look like a bulldog if I don’t like ‘em,” says the back-alley plastic surgeon working on changing prisoner Bogie’s appearance.) Dark Passage ends with the decades-earlier precursor to that moving last scene in The Shawshank Redemption, but not before sending a character to one of the most brutal deaths ever filmed in the Hays Code era.

Tonight, Noir City brings us Angie Dickinson in the flesh, introducing The Killers and Point Blank. I’ll be back to talk about that tomorrow.

A Christmas Meditation

2011-12-20T18:46:00.000-05:00

by Odie Henderson
(Odienator is off today)

I wrote this as an E-mail to a few friends on Christmas Day, 2001. In the ten years since, it has never seen a public light of day, at least not to my knowledge, and I was perfectly fine with that. But when it came time for me to write something for the holiday season, I decided to run it with an explanation of why I did. That explanation used to be here.

This introduction was originally four paragraphs longer, but I decided to let the work speak for itself. I saved one line from that which has been excised: This is probably the sweetest thing I have written or ever will write.

You can find your friendly neighborhood Odienator causing holiday trouble on December 29th when I run my annual Odie-Tune the News year-end column at Big Media Vandalism. For now, Odienator's far more sentimental alter ego is here to wish you a happy holiday (Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, etc.)

A Christmas Meditation
(written 12/25/2001)

This is my 32nd Christmas.

I do not remember them all. This Christmas is exit 29 on the slowly crumbling highway of my memory. Back at Exit 1, I found myself asking my mother how Santa Claus was going to visit, as we had no chimney. We did have a fire escape, and my quick thinking mother informed me that it would be a worthy substitute. I never questioned how such a huge person could fit through our little kitchen window--after all, he could fit through an even smaller chimney. When faced with the prospect of reward, logic becomes irrelevant.

My mother put me to bed, and then set about waiting for Santa to knock on the kitchen window. She expected him 'round Midnight. "How many hours away is that?" she asked me. I thought a minute, and then replied "four hours from now." Ample time for me to get to sleep, for if I were awake, I'd get nothin' for Christmas.

Sleep found me easily. For some reason, I had not yet acquired the impatience of a childhood Christmas Eve, that fight for sleep which so eludes us in younger days as we await the treasure the morning would bring. If patience is a virtue, then this was my last virtuous Christmas Eve.

You can tell this was the 70's...

Amongst my numerous gifts that Christmas, trapped under the Six Million Dollar Man doll, the Instamatic camera that took the now defunct 126 Kodak film, and Scrunchy the Shop-Rite bear, I found the insomnia that would plague me for many Christmas Eves to come.

As the numbers on the exits of memory's highway got bigger, so did my family. I became heir to four siblings, each of whom would find their own Christmas Eve's insomnia buried beneath the gifts of the first Christmas they remember. My siblings became heir to the Christmas Eve traditions my parents first bestowed upon their eldest.

Every year, my parents would pile us into whatever American boat of a car they owned back then, and we'd go sightseeing in the ghetto. No matter how poor the denizens of our humble 'hood were, they always managed to create splendid displays of Christmas lights in their windows and outside their homes. It was as if the government gave out Christmas lights in addition to cheese and peanut butter.

Claremont Avenue was the place to be, as far as Christmas displays were concerned. Claremont Avenue was a one way hill that went from West to East. The show began once it crossed what was once called Jackson Avenue. When we passed the C-Town on the corner, the night was penetrated by an aurorae of blinking, colorful stars. Every house seemed to vie for First Prize in the Christmas pageant.

Being the oldest, I always had a window seat. As my Pops slowly drove down the block, behind cars doing the same, I pressed my face to the window. As my parents discussed the craftmanship and other boring adult details, I would ooh and aah along with my siblings and whomever else was lucky enough to fit in our family boat.

The spectacle only lasted two city blocks, but to us, it was like U.S. 1 from Maine to Key West. This was our Las Vegas, and we had hit the jackpot.

As I left the calm seas of childhood for the choppier waters of maturity, I lived vicariously through the sense of wonder in my siblings' eyes as they opened the presents Santa (and I, once I got a job) left for them. By then, I knew the truth about Santa--not that he didn't exist, mind you, for he did. He just wasn't that jolly old White man Clement Moore wrote about; he was that short Black lady in the corner, watching us open our presents. The one who gave us the ultimate gift.

Time drives on, and here we are at exit 29 on the highway of my memory. I am far older and wiser than I was at exit 1. I am an insomniac for different reasons. My siblings are all adults as well, too, and they live vicariously through the wondering eyes of their children. I would have thought all my innocence lost, but September 11th reminded me that there was a lot more innocence to lose.

This year, I found myself longing for that more innocent time, a time when March of the Wooden Soldiers was broadcast every Christmas morning. A time when the Yule Log, a hideously boring four hours of footage of a burning log, played on Channel 11 every Christmas Eve. A time when I thought Santa did fire escapes as well as chimneys. So...

...last night, I got into my car and took a drive down memory's highway. As I crossed Martin Luther King Drive, which was once known as Jackson Avenue, the sky lit up and my childhood returned. Being the driver, I had more than one window seat. I drove slowly down the block, behind cars that were doing the same, and while I couldn't press my face to the window for fear of crashing, I still found myself oohing and aahing, as well as admiring the craftmanship and other boring adult details.

For that brief two blocks, I was a kid again, experiencing the wonders of Christmas that I had thought I'd lost.

I guess growing up poor in the 'hood gives you an appreciation for things others would find petty, cheap and garish. But for me and those like me, who have left both childhood and the 'hood, but carry them both in our hearts forever, this was a return to my Las Vegas. And, if only for a fleeting moment, my innocence regained.

Merry Christmas everybody.

A Tale Of OdieNary Mischief

2011-10-30T23:39:00.000-04:00

by Odienator

In my old neighborhood, October 30th was known as Mischief Night. Halloween was for trick-or-treating; Mischief Night was for treating ourselves to trickery. Some of the kids I knew took to vandalizing property or cars. They’d bust windows or tires, sometimes even set small fires in garbage cans or toss cherry bombs in public mailboxes. There’s a story I once heard about my aunt taking some pictures with her Kodak 126 camera, then mailing the film to 15 Cents a Photo on Mischief Night. Someone threw a cherry bomb or some such device into the mailbox, and blew up most of the mail inside. The post office was able to read the return address on my aunt’s package, and sent her film back to her all burned up on November 1st.

My cousins and I weren’t that destructive. We kept most of our mischief to ourselves and their small circle of friends. We threw water balloons at each other (sometimes we’d drop them from the second floor of my aunt’s house) and sprayed each other with whipped or shaving cream. And years before Homey the Clown brought it to mainstream audiences, we beat the shit out of each other with socks filled with tennis balls or flour. Swinging them in the air, we’d unleash our fury on anyone we knew.

One of the neighborhood kids, a sadistic girl too big for her age, would fill her sock full of pennies. She was to be avoided at all costs. Her sock had skull-and-crossbones stitched on it, but it should have had a face with X’s for eyes on it, because a sock full of pennies will knock you stupid. Once, as she was chasing me, I zigged when I should have zagged, and her weapon of choice caught me. I saw that sock coming at me in slow motion, and when it connected, I saw visions of Abe Lincoln doing the Bojangles. She hit me so hard, my cornrows came loose.

The resulting Pete Puma knot on my forehead was so big I couldn’t wear my cheap, plastic Halloween mask the next day. You remember those: They had a rubber band stapled into them so they’d stay on your head (and pull out your hair). Ironically, I was Bugs Bunny that year, so the Pete Puma knot was a nice touch. Chuck Jones would have approved.

This year, I found a pair of socks like the one filled with pennies that knocked the sense out of me. Yes, that's my incredibly large clodhopper in this picture. The design on the sock is NOT a commentary on the way my feet smell.

Lest I forget, we did something else that I’m not too proud of: We threw eggs. Not at each other, though occasionally that would happen. We threw them at cars and the Bergen Avenue bus. Now, I NEVER threw an egg at a car, for I feared I’d cause an accident or worse, the driver would immediately stop and tell my mother what I was doing. The bus was another story. I liked hitting the bus, and I rationalized why it was OK: The bus had a schedule and couldn’t pull over for more than a few seconds. That eliminated telling my mother. Kids in the ‘hood had been throwing eggs at the Bergen Avenue bus for generations, so they probably had special Mischief Night training for new drivers.

Mostly, I was good at it. For a kid who sucked at practically every other sports-related activity, this felt good. I could hit any part of the bus, from the Bergen Avenue sign in the front to the back lights at the top of the bus. I could time my throw so that the bus windshield would drive right into the flying egg. Granted, this is a BUS, a very large vehicle, but just go with me here. Let me have my joy.

God help you if you were on the Bergen Avenue bus on Mischief Night…and your window was open. You were asking to get hit with an egg. There was always someone who didn’t get the memo and wound up with egg on their faces. One year, I was standing on the curb holding an egg and waiting for the bus when the brother of sadistic skull and crossbones sock girl stepped to me. “Hey man, gimme your egg,” he said. I was scared of him, so I handed it over. As the bus came, I saw there were several open windows. In one of them was a dark skinned, bespectacled Black man with an Afro. I saw him looking our direction as the bus passed. Sock girl’s brother threw the egg, catching the man right in the forehead. POW!

“Oh shit!” my cousin yelled.

“Did you see that?! Aw man, did you see that?” asked the egg-thrower, jumping up and down excitedly. Yup, we saw it. We also saw the victim running down the street, swinging something in the air as he ran. I thought it was a sock full of pennies, but as he got closer, I realized it was a belt. The man still had egg dripping down his face. Some of it was on his tie. Pieces of eggshell were stuck in his Afro. His glasses were gooey. It must have taken the angry man about 15 seconds to run from the bus stop on the corner to the middle of the block where we were. The perpetrator had his back to the action, so he never knew what hit him.

“You bastard!” the man yelled, grabbing the kid’s arm and swinging him around in the familiar dance of the ass beating. The belt made explosive sounds as it made contact with ass. WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! “Where is your mother?!” the guy yelled. “Take me to your house NOW!”

I don’t know how, or if, that kid got away—I ran in the house like a coward. But every time he talked shit after that, we’d remind him of that Mischief Night. “ya ‘member when that man jumped off the bus and beat yo’ ass for throwing that egg?” That usually shut him up.

Many years later, I got a taste of my own medicine. I was driving home from the supermarket when these kids egged my car. Unfortunately for them, they egged me as I was pulling into the parking spot near my house. I got out of my car, and discovered the kids were still there. One was laughing and pointing at me.

“Yo, man! You should only egg the cars that are not pulling into parking spots!” I scolded.

“Whatchu gonna do about it?”

There were three kids. Two looked about 12 or 13. The ringleader who addressed me looked about 15. I assumed he threw the egg, as he was the only kid without an egg in his hand.

“I should make you clean off my car,” I responded.

“You can’t make me do squat, dead-eye!” he said, showboating for his friends.

Suddenly, I felt the little devil of mischief poking me with his pitchfork. I knew what those kids were thinking: He’s an adult, so he can’t do anything to us or he’ll get arrested. As Bugs would say, “They don’t know me very well!”

These were not very observant children. Had they been paying attention, they would have noticed that in my possession was a plastic Shop-Rite bag. Inside that bag was a dozen of eggs I had bought to make a Halloween cake for my niece’s Halloween party. Before I knew what I was doing, an egg mysteriously jumped into my hand. Suddenly, the ringleader stopped shooting off his lip. He and his cronies looked at me with an almost childlike “you wouldn’t!!” expression on their faces. I would.

I gave chase. I wasn’t always half-blind, and I wasn’t 12 anymore. I was 27. But I was 12 once, and I knew how to throw an egg. Plus, between 12 and 27, I played QB on a football team. So I’d gotten better at hitting targets much smaller than the Bergen Avenue bus. As the kids ran, I pummeled them with eggs. “You’re crazy!” the ringleader screamed. “RUN!” I yelled. “I’ve got more eggs!”

POW! POW! POW! I hit them three times each as we ran down the hill that constituted my block. I missed twice. As they ran across JFK Boulevard, I yelled out “only hit moving cars next time, you brats!” The ringleader yelled out an obscenity, but he didn’t stop running.

When I told my mother this story, she was livid. “You’re an adult!” she said. “For hitting those poor kids with eggs, you’re going to bust Hell wide open when you go!” I was going to bust it open even more widely; I neglected to mention to her the target of the last egg in my carton.

It hit the back window of the number 10 Boulevard bus. You're never too old for a little Mischief.

(Author Note: I’m just sitting at home this Mischief Night, but last year at this time, I was in Cardiff, Wales. On Halloween, I was in Dublin, Ireland. The Tale of OdieNary Madness that houses this crazy story is called “Dan Marino Bit Me.” But that’s a story for another time. Stay tooned!)

I Got It From My Mama

2011-09-29T00:43:00.000-04:00

Transcribed by Odienator

When I quote her, readers always ask if I make up the things my mother says. I do not. There is no way in Hell I’m that good a writer. So when you read this true story, be advised that I am quoting my mother verbatim. In fact, I am going to stage this as a little mini-play, so you can have Mom tell you the tale she told me.

Some things you should know: My mother looks half her age. Once, she got proofed at the casino, but I didn't. Another time, they thought she was my sister's sister. After 5 kids, she still looks good. She and Dick Clark have that arrangement with the Devil, I think. She always has nice clothes and 8 million matching pocket books to go with them.

To set the scene: I went to Mom’s last week. She asked me to fix the E-mail in her PC. My Mom sits on the carpet in front of a low computer stand with the keyboard on her lap to use the computer, so I had to do the same to fix it. This led to problems for me, which led to the story my brother and I were told by our mother.

(getting up from the PC after several minutes sitting on the floor)

Ow! Ow! (popping noises as joints come to life)

MOM

What’s your problem?

My back and knee are killing me from sitting on the floor like that!

MOM

You getting old, huh?

Cut me some slack. I’m 41 years old.

MOM

You’re what?

I said I’m forty-wuh—

MOM

Fuck boy! You’re older than me!

BROTHER

(Laughs)

How is that possible?

MOM

I stopped aging at seventeen. I gave y’all the opportunity to do so as well. Guess you didn’t take it.

Whatever, Ma.

MOM

Look at this!

(Sits down on the floor, then gets up quickly. She does this several times.)

MOM

See! Just like a teenager. You couldn’t even get up!

(Does it several more times, a few in dramatic, theatrical fashion)

You gonna get stuck down there.

MOM

(getting up)

I’m still young and I still got it.

(My brother and I look at each other. He rolls his eyes.)

MOM

Listen. I went to the track with your father last week. Goddamn penny slot machines ate my 80 dollars. I was wearing this belt--

(Leans to the side so we can see the belt. It says “Kiss Me” on it.)

MOM

—and this fresh little old White man sat next to me. He pointed to my belt and said (in old man voice) “I sure wish I could do that!” Then he said “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna bother you.” I said to myself, I know D-A-M well you’re not. But he was persistent. “Can I sit here and play along?” I looked at him and nodded. He was a dapper old man, dressed in a suit with a hat like they wore in old musicals, like what my father used to wear when I was a little girl. I swear, he looked like he could just tip his hat and tap dance away.

(Touches the brim of an imaginary hat, slants to the side and starts mock-tapping)

(singing)

I’m tap dancin’ and singin’ da BLUUU-UUUUES!

(shuffles off to an imaginary stage left. Starts walking back to where she was standing before)

Anyway, after about 5 minutes of me pressing on that stupid ass slot machine, the old man got bold. “Excuse me, but you are so beautiful. Please, can I buy you lunch at the restaurant over there when you’re finished?” I smiled and said, “No thank you, “ but he was not having it. “Oh please?!” he said, touching the brim of his hat and leaning forward. “I’ll be right over there at those slot machines. Look for me, beautiful!”

BRO

Where was Daddy when this was happening?

MOM

He was upstairs shoveling his money into the horse’s ass.

Ma!!

MOM

Anyway, I kept giving my money to the slots, like a jackass. The old man came back. I saw him out the corner of my eye, just shuffling over with his little hat and his dress suit. I’m waiting for Cab Calloway music to start playing and him to start dancing. “I’m back!” he said. “And I still want to take you to lunch, beautiful.” I just wanted him to go away, but I didn’t want to be mean.

That would be a first!

MOM

Don’t make me slap the shit out of you!

(Looks at Odie. She’s serious. Odie moves out of her reach)

MOM

So I told him I was on a diet. “Oh come on, you?!” he said. “You’re perfect, beautiful. Now how about lunch?” He tipped his hat and winked at me. When he realized his charm only went so far, he said “OK. OK. Can I at least give you my phone number? You come here often.” He wrote his number on a napkin and gave it to me. “Don’t make me wait, beautiful,” he said, “I won’t be around forever.” Then he tipped his hat and left. I threw his number in the garbage can after he left.

Just like a woman! Instead of telling him you were married, you teased the poor man! You probably flirted with him like that bear on Bugs Bunny. “Tell me MORE about my eyes!”

BRO

(laughing)

He could have been rich! Wouldn’t you feel messed up if he were?

You’ll be watching the news, and they’ll show his picture and say (in newscaster voice) “The richest man in the state died today. Having no sweethearts or family, he left his multimillion dollar estate to his tap dancing cat named Singin’ Da Blues.” They show the cat, and it has a hat on just like the old man!

MOM

Shit boy, I told you before all that doesn’t matter. You can’t take it with you when you go. What’d I tell you all the time? You’re born with nothing, you die with nothing. All that stuff stays here.

BRO

But if you had it, what would you do with it? Say you hit the lottery. What would you do?

MOM

Spend it. Every last dime.

BRO

But what about our inheritance?!!

MOM

Y’all don’t have an inheritance now! You can’t miss what you don’t have!

BRO

Aw, that’s messed up!

MOM

But also like I told you before: If I got rich, I know a way to take it all with me.

Remind me. How?

MOM

I’d spend it all on me! I’d get a new wardrobe, some new hair. Then I’d go to Nip/Tuck, get me some lipo—

Which you don’t need!

MOM

—get a facelift to get rid of these wrinkles—

Which you don’t need!

MOM

—get my tits put back where they used to be—

JESUS! MA!

MOM

—and when I’m dead and gone, and people come up to look at me in that coffin (crosses arms to simulate resting in peace) they are going to see me looking beautiful and dressed to the nines and they gonna nod and say “Yup. Bitch took it all with her!”

(looking at BRO)

Now I know she’s gone senile. I’m goin’ home.

MOM

Leave if you want to. Go on! You just mad because your mama ain’t creaky like your old ass is. Get back down on the floor and try to get up again! I dare you.

I’m outta here. Bye, Ma.

MOM

I still got it. Rich White men talkin’ to me and everything. You just can’t deal! Your mama still got it, boy!

She damn sure does.

El Amigo De John Sayles

2011-09-14T11:54:00.000-04:00

by Odienator

Odie On Demand strikes again at Roger Ebert's On Demand Blog. This time, it's John Sayles' Amigo, the director's 17th feature.

There is something to be said for the economy in John Sayles' movie titles. He gets his point across in five words or less. The theatrical films he has written and directed bear the names of locations ("Matewan," "Sunshine State," "Silver City," "Limbo") or are deceptively simple descriptive statements ("The Secret of Roan Inish," "The Brother From Another Planet," "Return of the Secaucus Seven," "Amigo"). All 17 titles average out to just under 3 words per movie moniker (actually, 2.5), which means Sayles' 18th movie must star the king of the three word movie title, Steven Seagal. Laugh if you must, but IMDb will tell you Sayles once wrote a film for Dolph Lundgren. Seagal is only a "Marked for Death" sequel away, should Mr. Sayles take my advice.

In the meantime, his 17th film opens September 16th On Demand. "Amigo" follows the path running through much of Sayles' work: It is politically aware, occasionally melodramatic and maintains a certain intimacy despite sprawling across multiple characters and stories. Bitter irony and blatant humanism peacefully co-exist as Sayles' heroes, heroines and villains struggle to maintain the dignity he inherently believes they have.

Read the rest here.

Tell Gobby All About It: Born To Be Bad

2011-09-10T16:26:00.001-04:00

by Odienator

(This is part of the Nicholas Ray Blog-A-Thon over at Cinema Viewfinder.)

In 1950, cinematic women lost their damn minds. Eve Harrington longed for the spotlight, and was willing to wrestle it from Margo Channing by any means necessary. Norma Desmond longed for the spotlight too, and was willing to obtain it by shooting a gigolo in the back under the guise of “madness.” These characters are well known, classic dames of the cinema, but there’s another, lesser-known schemer vying for the Bad Girl title in 1950. Her name is Christabel Caine, and the adulation she seeks isn’t from the audience, it’s from Dead Presidents and the rich men who consort with them. Like Salt and Pepa, Christabel will take your man while making you look like the villain in the process. Then she’ll attempt to divorce him and take half his shit. It doesn’t matter if you’re her innocent cousin or the man she really loves. She’ll toss you under the bus while lying and denying all the way to the bank. “Who me? What bus?” she’ll ask innocently.

Innocent is a trait normally played by Joan Fontaine, the actress who embodies the bad girl whose characteristics are described in the title of Nicholas Ray’s 1950 soap opera, Born to be Bad. Remember how you feared Cary Grant was poisoning Ms. Fontaine with that ominous glass of milk in Suspicion? After Born to Be Bad, you’ll not only root for Cary to be the killer, you’ll be spooning poison into her milk like it was Nestle Quik. Christabel is unrepentant and irredeemable, and Fontaine relishes the change of pace. She and her director know this is 100% Grade-A soapy kitsch that requires its lead to go full-court bitch, plowing down all comers as she slam-dunks her way into the society pages. Christabel’s surname, Caine, made me think of another unrepentant soap diva, All My Children’s Erica Kane. Since I’ve loved watching my “stories” ever since I was a kid, I knew I’d get a kick out of Born to Be Bad.

Bad is a battle of good and bad Joans, Leslie and Fontaine, respectively. Leslie’s Donna is Christabel’s cousin. She’s engaged to a very wealthy Howard Hughes clone played by Zachary Scott. She is leaving her job after the wedding, and thinks Christabel would be a good fit as a replacement. Christabel purposely shows up a day early, pretending to be embarrassed by her faux pas. In reality, she knew Donna was attending a big socialite party that day, and her cousin would be way too nice not to invite her to tag along. Out of the kindness of her own heart and the stupidity of her own naivete, Donna allows her to stay. Her name may be Donna, but she’s more like another character on Sanford and Son, Lamont. She’s a big dummy for not kicking Christabel to the curb.

Christabel plans to kick Donna to the curb, though. While Donna is out at a bash, Christabel awakens to find cynical, abrasive writer Nick Bradley in the house. It’s a Meet Not-So-Cute, as Christabel is terrified and Bradley, in the guise of Robert Ryan, is suitably gruff and smart-mouthed. Ms. Caine’s loins are intrigued by Bradley, but her brain and her pocketbook remain fixated on Donna’s fiancée, Curtis. With Nick, she enters into what he would later call a “sex attraction,” biding her time before making her move on her sugar daddy.

Christabel’s racket is to feign innocence while underhandedly shaping the scenario to suit her. She uses her uncle and aunt’s influence to get closer to Curtis, then becomes Iago to his Othello. Instead of selling infidelity, Iago Caine peddles golddigger insurance. Curtis is worried that Donna is, to quote Biggie Smalls, trying to stick him for his paper. Instead of hollering “we want prenup, we want prenup!” like Kanye West, Curtis trusts his fiancée because, well, she’s trustworthy. Leave it to Ms. Caine to bring the snake to this Garden of Eden. Christabel becomes that bug in Curtis’ ear, whispering that he should conduct a “test” on Donna to gauge her intentions. Insecure Curtis falls for the bait, never once noticing that his soon-to-be cousin-in-law knows way too much about the ways of the greedy.

“Oh, Curtis, why?!!!” asked the woman in front of me at NYC’s famous (and allegedly pervert-ridden) Film Forum. Until the theater ran Born to Be Bad, I had no idea it existed. This after listening to Joan Leslie talk about her career at the Castro Theater’s Noir City Festival in 2009. (Aside: I covered that festival in 2010). Because Fontaine is so good at seeming to be innocent, that’s why, I wanted to tell my fellow audience member. We know better, and so does Nick Bradley. Ray is surprisingly, hilariously explicit in explaining the real reason Bradley is willing to put up with Christabel and her Christabelshit: Her pussy is da BOMB. Every time Bradley kisses her, Ryan grabs Fontaine and practically swings her around like a rag doll, slamming his face into hers with lip-bruising force. Even Curtis does it. Nobody kisses Donna like that, and when she exits Curtis’ life after being unfairly accused, nobody expects Curtis to start singing Ritchie Valens songs.

Only one other man sees through Christabel’s shenanigans, and Born to Be Bad wouldn’t be the classic it is without him. According to imDB, Mel Ferrer plays Gabriel Broome, but he calls himself Gobby. Gobby paints pictures of society dames, pictures that hang over the fireplaces of mansions throughout town. The pictures are over the fireplace, but Gobby’s personality is IN the fireplace: he’s flamingly gay and absolutely fabulous. I’ve read reviews that question this, but you don’t need to be Liza Minelli to see that Ferrer is clearly testing the censors with his portrayal of the BFF. “You don’t care very much for women, do you?” Christabel asks. Gobby replies “My dear girl, apart from painting my major occupation is convincing women that I'm harmless.” Ferrer’s delivery drips with sarcasm: These are some dumb ass, unobservant women!

Christabel also tries to outsmart Gobby, but he’s not having any of that. “This is Gobby,” he tells Christabel after catching her in a lie, and his reasons for painting her picture have little to do with artistry and everything to do with impending scandal. The price will go up if Christabel is successful, and Gobby’s gallery will be swarmed by a bunch of open wallets and purses. It’s a tribute to Ray and his screenwriters that the uber-macho Nick Bradley and the anti-macho Gobby get the film’s best lines. Ryan sinks his teeth into the hilarious macho dialogue: “How many times do I have to tell you how much you love me?” he asks Christabel. And Gobby’s one-line takedown of a society woman at a party is worth the price of renting Born to Be Bad.

Fontaine is excellent, and almost as much fun as Ferrer. After a particularly duplicitious move by Christabel, the woman in front of me yelled at the screen. "TWO FACED BITCH!!!' she exclaimed, much to the approval of the audience. That woman couldn't count. Christabel isn't two-faced. This bitch has EIGHT faces. Fontaine is a joy wearing all of 'em.

Fontaine may be good, but the film's best performance belongs to Joan Leslie. She has to be the beacon of virtue, the victimized, without being so damn boring we don't feel some guilt for loving Christabel's villany. Leslie gives a superb, nuanced turn that's more complex than the film warrants or deserves. My favorite Leslie movie is still The Hard Way (Ida Lupino--she scares the shit out of me!), but Born to be Bad is a fine runner up.

Despite coming out two months before All About Eve, Born to Be Bad shares some eerie similarities. with my favorite movie of all time. Gobby is Addison, Nick Bradley is macho like Bill Sampson and Christabel is obviously Eve. Also like my favorite movie of all time’s Eve and Addison, Gobby and Christabel get exactly what’s coming to them as a result of their unholy alliance. Gobby’s last scene shows that he, like Addison, benefited most from the bad girl’s evil plans. Now if only the filmmakers had spun off Gobby, making him a gossip columnist at odds with Hedda Hopper and Luella Parsons. Now that would have been fierce.

I'm late, but so what, dammit! Click here for the blog-a-thon.

Gonzo the Not-So-Great

2011-08-25T20:31:00.004-04:00

by Odienator

Once again, it's Odie On Demand at Roger Ebert's Movies on Demand blog. This time, I review Beware the Gonzo, this generation's answer to 1990's superb Pump Up The Volume. That movie had Christian Slater's career best performance, and played better to me at 20 then it does at 41. I have such affection for it because, to paraphrase Dazed and Confused: I get older but my nostagia stays the same age.

Beware the Gonzo didn't engage me the way Volume did. In fact, Gonzo kind of pissed me off. You can judge for yourself if I were being overly sensitive. Here's a taste:

"Beware the Gonzo" begins with one of those flash-forwarded scenes where something from later in the film is presented to us as a means of foreshadowing. Being out of context, the scene has the tricky role of piquing the viewer's interest while not being a spoiler. It rarely works, and "Beware the Gonzo"'s opening scene is a big spoiler: a beaten up Eddie "Gonzo" Gilman (Ezra Miller) stares into a video camera and tells us that his actions have cost him his best friends, made him lose his girl, gotten him kicked out of school, and almost caused the divorce of his parents (played nicely by Campbell Scott and Amy Sedaris). This is supposed to be an apology to all those he has wronged, but instead, it's one of those politician mea culpas, a whiny "my bad if you were upset" speech that never forgets to be more about its subject than atoning for his wrongdoings. Out of context, it seemed pathetic, but I was willing to grant that I didn't have the entire speech at my disposal. However, it hung over the movie, and as I met the interesting and trusting characters, dread crept in; I kept waiting for the moment when Gonzo would stop being the likeable character he is for much of the film and turns into this destructive monster.

More here.

Firing the Help And Shutting Up Little Men

2011-08-24T17:59:00.001-04:00

by Odienator

I'm around folks, just not here. I promise a post here soon. In the meantime:

First up: today's piece over at Roger Ebert's On Demand Blog: Shut Up Little Man: An Audio Misadventure

"One question I did want "Shut Up Little Man" to answer, though I know it cannot, is "Why are Pete and Ray's interactions funny?" All Ray does is call Pete all manner of unfriendly gay names, and Pete responds with his catchphrase or by getting into fights with Ray. The rants make little to no sense most of the time. Both Ray and Pete cuss incessantly and it seems endless. If an arguing, fussing and cussing household is funny, then I grew up in an episode of Def Comedy Jam. But to me, it's not funny, and this isn't a generational issue. The "Shut Up Little Man" tapes surfaced when I was in my 20's, around the same time as other audio-verite features like The Jerky Boys and radio station prank calls. Twentysomething guys were the target audience, but I never found any of these items very amusing. Perhaps, as one of "Shut Up Little Man"'s talking heads notes, finding amusement in audio-verite requires the human trait of being voyeuristic and nosy about other people. This isn't a trait of mine, because Kitty Cat, I know what happens to nosy fellows."

More here.

Second, my takedown of The Help over at Big Media Vandalism. I don't hate it like many do, but I also don't love it like many more do, either.

"The Help has been kicking ass at the box office for 2 weeks, and in that time, I’ve read numerous articles defending its subject matter and its storytelling device. Some of these pieces have been extremely condescending, with the writer expressing shock—SHOCK!!!!—that some people (uppity Negroes and “liberal” Whites, this means you) would find the film either patronizing or more of the same “Black story told through White characters shenanigans” Hollywood is known to pull. Equally condescending have been some of the conversations I’ve had, both online and in person, with people who love the film. I’ve been told that I don’t know how to watch a movie, that I went in looking for problems, and that I was just too Black to enjoy the movie. My personal favorite piece of wisdom came from a White colleague of mine, who looked me dead in my redbone face and told me that Kathryn Stockett, The Help’s author, knew more about the Black experience than I did. Granted, Black women had a hand in both our upbringings, but unlike Ms. Stockett’s influential mother figure, mine repeatedly made it clear that she was not my goddamn maid."

More here.

Things that Ruined My Childhood: The Smurfette Show

2011-07-28T23:23:00.002-04:00

by Odienator

Over the next few weeks, I'll be introducing a few new features here at The Odie Blog. Let's start with:

Things that Ruined My Childhood

This banner features items that have given me a different perspective on a TV show, movie, or other media from my childhood. Sometimes ignorance is indeed bliss, especially if that ignorance was brought on by age-specific naivete. What sucks about growing up is that you realize what Scooby Snacks were, why SnagglePuss was pink and constantly having objects shoved up his ass, and why Afternoons were so delightful to Starland Vocal Band. Getting older clues you in to the activity Cyndi Lauper sang about in She-Bop. Girls really DO want to have fun, and as Redd Foxx famously said, "how the fuck do you think they can say no all the time?"

Actually, I'm grateful for figuring all that out. Figuring things out is a good thing. It's when things that were so innocent in your childhood are so twisted by sick and talented individuals that one's childhood becomes totally ruined. That's what I'll be discussing whenever this feature appears here at Tales of Odienary Madness.

First up: In honor of The Smufocalypse occurring this Friday, I give you TV Funhouse's The Smurfette Show.

TV Funhouse was one of the more consistently funny featurettes on Saturday Night Live. Created by Robert Smigel, TV Funhouse was the SNL Digital Short of its time. It was constantly offensive and often the funniest part of the show. It used edited audio clips to send John McCain back to Vietnam while trying to give an actual speech about George W. Bush. He used real audio of the 700 Club and scripted (at least I hope it was scripted) dialogue that had Pat Robertson saying that Lou Rawls was burning in Hell for singing You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine. Apparently the former Budweiser spokesman thought his love was better than God's.

Smigel also had 60's legend and onscreen wife of Danny Glover, Darlene Love, sing a carol called "Chrstimastime for the Jews." He did the video in Claymation, too. And I won't even go down the road created by Smigel's Ambiguously Gay Duo, who were recently made real in a skit featuring Jon Hamm and Jimmy Fallon as the Duo and co-writers Steve Carrell and Stephen Colbert as their nemeses.

Many times, Smigel's cartoons tried to ruin my childhood and early adolescence. He had Tracy Morgan voicing an unemployed Mr. T looking for acting work in the least appropriate roles for his talent. Animated like the old Mr. T cartoon series, Clubber Lang shows up to beat the hell out of directors who won't let him play Henrik in A Doll's House or do a commercial for feminine hygiene products. TV Funhouse also featured a newly militant Franklin from Charlie Brown teaming up with Valerie from Josie and the Pussycats to give a speech at the Million Man March.

Neither of these ruined my childhood. Mr. T's breakfast cereal did more harm to me as a kid. Whose idea was it to market sharp ass letter T's made out of a Cap'n Crunch-like substance to little kids? It was like eating broken glass. And I was happy to see Franklin's Black Panther routine, even if it were short lived (he short-circuits during a performance of In the Ghetto because there are too many Blacks around). After all, Charlie Brown only had the personality-deprived kid around so that, when he got busted making coon jokes, he could say "but some of my best friends are Black."

The Smurfette Show hit a nerve, though, because it supported all the negative things my adult brain realized about the Smurfs. Debuting in 1981, the Smurfs were a seemingly innocent, if annoying, bunch of little blue creatures living in mushrooms on NBC. They were all male, but I never caught on to that because, outside of Bugs Bunny's transvestism (which was kinda hot, actually), cartoons were the last thing my pre-adolescent brain tried to sexualize. They used the word "smurf" as subsitution for numerous words, which was far less distracting than Strawberry Shortcake's berry talk. The Smurfs had names like Brainy, Jokey, Greedy, Handy and Vanity (not THAT Vanity). They were led by kindly old man, Papa Smurf, who shared the same last name as everybody else.

Then Smurfette showed up, and if I remember correctly, she was designed by Gargamel to destroy the camaraderie of the Smurfs. Unfortunately, Smurfette looked busted. None of the male Smurfs wanted to get with her because she was either too scary looking for them or they were too busy la-la-la-la-la-la-ing each other. After Papa Smurf gave her a makeover blonde coif and some new titties, however, she started raking in the big bucks as the only chick in the village. Papa Smurf knew Plain Janes were evil, and blondes have more fun.

My older cousins used to say that Smurfette was curing all the other Smurfs of blue balls, which was impossible because--well, never mind. Fast-forward a couple of decades, and TV Funhouse has turned Smurfette into Anna Nicole Smurf.

Voiced by Amy Poehler, Smurfette is now a foul mouthed, bored reality show ho who likes to party and enjoys rubbing her coochie on everything and everybody. "I'm sick of this BLEEP village," she whines. "Everybody's blue..." She is perpetually horny and hungry, yelling at one of the other Smurfs, "you ate the last piece of pizza, bitch!" She's seen humping her couch and mistreating her assistant, Low Self-Esteemy Smurf.


*I now know which Smurf I would have been.*

Smurfette is irritable because, as she tells Papa Smurf, "My BLEEP itches!"

"You mean your Smurf itches," Papa Smurf corrects her. "Oh yeah," she says, "and I need to master--I mean Smurferbate."

Gargamel, enemy of the Smurfs, is watching The Smurfette Show on TV in his house. "Who green-lit this?" he asks his cat Azrael.

As Smurfette gleefully rides one of her neighbors, Gargamel asks "Why won't they get her any help?!!"

Help is exactly what Smurfette needs, because in a line of dialogue I wish I could wash from my eardrums with Clorox, Low Self-Esteemy Smurf informs us that Smurfette needed to go to the gynecologist because her IUD kept slipping. Gargamel hears this and sends Azrael to portray the pussy who has come to fix her pu--I mean smurf.

When Smurfette is in the stirrups, she asks Dr. Azrael a pertinent question:

"While you're down there, will you pierce my smurf?"

Dr. Azrael is shocked!

Mental note: Do NOT touch her Smurf!

Azrael steals Smurfette, at Gargamel's request, but he gets more than he bargained for when she gets to his house. Looking at Gargamel seductively, Smurfette asks "do you wanna Smurf me?" before climbing on, and rubbing her body against, a large part of Gargamel's person.

His NOSE, people! (God, you've such dirty minds.)

Gargamel can't handle all that good Smurfin', and drops dead on the spot, leaving everything to Smurfette in his will. Her new digs are redesigned by Vanity Smurf, who is well past metrosexuality and even further down the road from heterosexuality.

No matter how much Queer Eye for the Smurf Girl Vanity uses to fix Gargamel's drag digs, Smurfette winds up in the same situations and routines she had in Smurf Village. TV Funhouse leaves The Smurfette Show with one final, unforgetettable glimpse of our heroine, doing what a hard partying celebrity reality show star does best.

After watching this skit, all those innocent visions of the Smurfs I had in my head were destroyed. This is why I'm not going to see the new Smurfs movie. (Lest lightning strike me, full disclosure forces me to admit this is not the only reason). But don't let me stop you from taking your kids, or even just yourself, to see it. Honest to God, I will not pass judgement. And as you're looking at Katy Perry's Smurfette, remember she is voiced by the same chick who appears in videos with cupcakes on her hooters. Don't blame me if that ruins your childhood.

California Girls, They're Unforgettable...

Saving the Wales

2011-07-26T21:27:00.000-04:00

by Odienator

Check out my first piece over at Roger Ebert's Movies on Demand blog! It's about Sleep Furiously, a Welsh documentary available at Fandor for a free 24 hour period on July 29th. It's an unconventional documentary, and I enjoyed its leisurely pace and its observations of rural life in a town beset by change. A snippet below:

"You've got to have characters to make a community."

What does it mean to a community when a school shuts down? Here in the U.S., it means either the state doesn't have any money to run it or the kids have burned it down. In Trefeurig, Wales, however, the dissolution of a school is something far more ominous, especially if it is the only school in town. "Sleep Furiously" uses Trefeurig's school closing as its central event yet only hints at its deeper implications: Youth may be wasted on the young, but the world can't continue to exist without them.

Read the rest here!

Summer of 86, or No, I Have Not Been Sitting On My Ass

2011-07-20T15:02:00.002-04:00

by Odienator

Oh, my beloved Tales of Odienary Madness. You are so neglected.

You can blame the job for that, but not entirely. Just because I am not here doesn't mean I'm nowhere to be found out here in the Blog-O-Sphere. This summer I've been contributing to the Summer of '86 series being run by Slant Magazine's The House Next Door in conjunction with Aaron Aradillas of Blog Talk Radio's Back By Midnight and Jamey DuVall and Jerry Dennis of Blog Talk Radio's Movie Geeks United! If this series were a movie, you'd see all those logos appearing on the screen before the opening credits. Alas, it is a blog and podcast series, so you'll just have to use your imagination.

Please support the aforementioned linked sites, as the series is populated by remarkable commentators and writers--and me too. You can read all the existing House Next Door Summer of '86 pieces here, with more to come throughout the summer. I start embracing the trashier side of my 1986 movie love in August.

The Summer of 1986 was a pivotal moment in my life. I was 16, but I'd just graduated high school. I spent the summer preparing for my freshman year at a Jesuit college, coping with the fallout from losing my eye the year before, and falling in love for the first time. As if life weren't eventful enough, there were plenty of great (and terrible) movies for me to see. After spending the Summer of '85 with a patched eye and a sensitivity to light so painful I couldn't watch any movies, let alone go outside, I was ready to devour the summer movies 1986 had to offer.

So far, I've done six pieces for the House. As a piece of shamefess self-promotion I really should do more often, here's a piece of my Summer of '86's so far. Click on the link to read the entire piece over at the House.

Running Scared (Peter Hyams, director)

Running Scared is one of the finest examples of The Jungle Fever Cookie Buddy Movie. Pioneered by Skin Game and made profitable by 48 Hrs., the JFCBM purports to promote racial harmony through the magic of macho male bonding between African-Americans and Caucasians. Yet the darker hued partners in these movies were always levels beneath their White counterparts: Lou Gossett was a slave to Jim Garner's slave trader, and Eddie Murphy was a common criminal punched out and called racial slurs by a pre-mugshot Nick Nolte. If that's equality, Amy Winehouse is sober. Running Scared has something no JFCBM has, not even the more balanced Lethal Weapon series: It starts with the two buddies firmly entrenched in a bromance Judd Apatow would envy.

Big Trouble in Little China (John Carpenter, director)

God, I'm such a kung-fu movie geek, which makes me the wrong person to do a piece on Big Trouble in Little China. This is a flawed movie, with a script whose story is best described as garbage. The movie makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I still can't explain all the sorcery mumbo-jumbo or why the lead villain appears as both a decrepit old man and a ghost who can blind people with light from his mouth. I don't understand how Kim Cattrall's character is involved with its Chinatown heroes, nor how China's main character, Jack Burton, is affiliated with Wang Chi, the character whose fiancée sends the film on its journey. Big Trouble in Little China is more than happy to lazily fall back on its special effects in lieu of anything coherent. With that said, there's something about this movie…

Under the Cherry Moon (Prince, director)

Under the Cherry Moon is terrible, and it really didn't have to be. With a less egotistical, more talented director and a streamlined script, this could have been one hell of an intentionally funny buddy comedy. The male leads play off each other nicely, and a scene of mistaken identity pays off hilariously. Maybe that charming picture would have resulted if Pet Sematary's Mary Lambert got to keep the directorial reins assigned her by Warner Bros. Unfortunately, she was replaced by the film's star. The results are a script that has no idea what it wants to be, and a director who keeps finding ways to put himself into every frame like a celluloid virus.

Labyrinth (Jim Henson, director)

But Labyrinth's fascination for me is its way of merging the darker Jim Henson from Saturday Night Live and those Wilkins Coffee commercials with the sweet, lovely man whose voice and puppetry hosted the Muppet Show and Sesame Street News. As always, I accept his creations as real, and the universe they inhabit benefits from Henson's camerawork and the art direction. The M.C. Escher stairs sequence is especially memorable, as is the one number David Bowie doesn't sing. You'd think a kid who grew up on Sid & Marty Kroft drug-induced puppet freakiness would remain unshaken by its more expensive looking re-emergence, but I was creeped out of my mind by the self-decapitating Day-Glo Fire Gang in the "Chilly Down" number. It was worth it, as they gave me a line I always say to women with too much weave: "Gurrrl, where you goin' wit' a head like DAT?!!!"

Legal Eagles (Ivan Reitman, director)

Meanwhile, Hannah keeps trying to seduce Redford in order to justify actions she'll take later in the film when Terrence Stamp winds up dead. Redford resists at first, especially after Hannah performs one of her pieces for him. Legal Eagles wisely leaves Daddy's lost painting unseen, but no such fate spares us the most hilarious attempt at pretentious, arty twaddle in cinema history. In a huge apartment with no smoke detectors, Hannah plays with large amounts of fire while telling a story about watching some woman burn up in her car. At the end of the piece, she goes behind a picture of herself…and blows the fuck up. As Redford grabs a fire extinguisher to put out her smoldering, burning corpse, he realizes it's just a mannequin. Hannah appears behind him on the couch.

"How did that make you feel?" she asks.

"Like watching that Beavis and Butthead approved, batshit crazy scene again!" said I, reaching for the remote control.

Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling (Richard Pryor, director)

Pryor plays not only the lead but the aforementioned spectral figure, whom the credits refer to as "Alter Ego." The Alter Ego serves the same purpose as Jessica Lange's Angel of Death in Jazz, that is, to walk the victim back through events in his life that led him to his near-death state, but Alter Ego is more concerned with trying to convince Jo Jo Dancer that his fucked up life is salvageable. Alter Ego is first seen pulling himself from Jo Jo's smoldering body post-freebase accident, walking out of the hospital and into traffic stark naked. At first it seems that Alter Ego is the film's comedy relief, but his true purpose is revealed when Jo Jo Dancer solves its opening scene's mystery of how its protagonist wound up in that hospital.

Like his stand-up, Pryor deftly mixes humor and tragedy, subtly tweaking familiar tales from his routines. The results are far more harrowing when played out by Pryor and his actors; subtracted from Pryor's verbal delivery, the comedic focus sort of switches places with the trauma of the actual events. Hearing Pryor tell you the story of him in the hospital burnt to a crisp, comparing himself to fried chicken, is funny and terrifying. Seeing Pryor burnt to a crisp, with doctors working on him in a well-edited and shot sequence, is just terrifying.

More to come.

So no, folks, I haven't been sitting on my ass. But I will do my best to get my ass over here to this blog more often than I have been. Scout's Honor.

The Perils of Being Named Odie

2011-07-06T19:43:00.000-04:00

by Odienator

(Editor's note: Today is my 24th anniversary of being a computer programmer. I started workng in the I.T. field on July 6, 1987. Over the past year, I've decided to document my life as a programmer in the hopes of making a book out of it. You might think a book about being a programmer would be deathly boring, and under normal circumstances, you'd be correct. But I've had an entire career of insane things happen to me, from being attacked by customers AND wild animals to being accused of heinous crimes I didn't commit.

Over the past 5 years, I've been travelling the world for work. A lot of adventures have happened as I interacted with different cultures and different locales. I chose a chapter from the section of the book dealing with my current job. This is the first time anybody is setting eyes on this besides me, and it's certainly rough draft, but what the hell, I said I'd do this today so here it is. I don't have a name for the book, so I've affectionately taken to calling it The Odie Wears Prada. While I head into New York City for my yearly Scotch toast to my career, please read and enjoy!)

The Perils of Being Named Odie

I was christened Odie the same year I started working in I.T. I have a college buddy to thank for that. “Odie” played on the theory that, unlike Garfield’s absurdly stupid dog, I was actually pretty damn smart. ‘Twas a nomenclative paradox similar to a 300-lb Puerto Rican being called “Flaco,” or akin to my fellow one-eyed bruva man Tiny Lister being “Tiny” despite his 6’5” frame. My collegiate nickname was the first time I’d been given a moniker that wasn’t derogatory, so it stuck. In life, I’d been called “Professor,” “Four-Eyes,” “Wannabe,” “Fat Face,” “Dead-eye,” “Popeye,” “Bucky Beaver” and “Odell Glasses.” A yellow cartoon dog was a promotion in class. So Odie I am, and Odie I shall be forever more.

Until 2001, only my friends called me Odie. I was Odell, which is my middle name, at home, and I used my government name at school and work. My boss at the hedge fund I'd just been hired at asked if I preferred my first or middle name, and when I acknowledged I liked Odie, she put it on my business cards and my nameplate. I figured it would be easier to spell and remember, but I was wrong. I’ve been mistaken for Opie, Okie, Otis, O.D. and most commonly, Oddie. I used to correct people, but I learned to let it slide after a violent altercation between me and the woman who made my nameplate at a dot.com at which I contracted after the hedge fund. She brought me a nice sign that spelled Odie “O.D.”

Politely, I said, “um, my actual initials are W.O., if we must use the initials format. But my name’s spelled O-D-I-E.”

The woman, a pissed-off looking sistah with an icy stare, snatched the nameplate from my hands. Sensing her anger, I tried to diffuse it: “It’s OK,” I said nervously. “I’ll hang this on the cubicle wall. Perfectly fine!” I reached for it, attempting to take it back and let bygones be bygones. I’ve made a career out of angering Black women, but never for anything this minor. “It’s really nice,” I said, grasping at straws of forgiveness.

The sign, which was a piece of plastic with paper letters stuck on it, couldn’t have taken more than 10 minutes to make. But this woman responded as if I’d pissed on her masterpiece. “I’ll just make another goddamn sign,” she said through clenched teeth. Then, as dramatically as possible, she slammed the plastic identifier across her raised knee, snapping it in three pieces. One piece flew up in the air, landing behind her. The other two pieces came flying at me from her destructive hands. One hit the desk and the other flew behind it. I heard her muttering obscenities as she stomped off. As I stood there, frozen in shock, my cubicle neighbors looked at me with “you shouldn’t have done that, dude” expressions on their faces. I started to wonder if everybody in the office had misspelled names on their signs, so as to avoid Sign Sistah’s wrath. That guy’s name isn’t Mike, I thought. It’s probably Jason.

The next day, this mousy young man brought me the corrected sign. He stuck it on the cubicle wall without saying a word, looked at me with sad eyes, then walked away. I did my best to avoid Sign Sistah my entire tenure at the dot.com.

I still have the corrected sign. It’s sticking on my fridge, along with all the other magnetic name plates I’ve collected in my career.

Odie has always been a troublesome name for people to deal with, but a German customer took it to a new level of confusion.

In 2008, I was tagged to visit Germany to teach a training class on our 5 software products. I’d never been to Germany, so this was new and exciting for me. My aunt was stationed on an army base in Wiesbaden, and I thought it would be nice to visit her while I was on business. However, I was going to be in Landshut, the capital of Lower Bavaria, and not to the Frankfurt area where Wiesbaden resides. My Wiesbaden visit in 2009, which offered me a chance to visit the base, is another story.

As with my Japan visit, I immersed myself in learning about my destination. I bought a travel book on Munich, which covered Landshut, and I spent a pretty penny on Berlitz books and CD’s so I could learn German. Unlike Japan, I would not be functionally illiterate in Germany. German uses our alphabet, so if I couldn’t understand it, I at least could try to read it. There were some freaky letters, including a funky looking B that sounded like an S, but for the most part, I was dealing with recognizable letters in some very long ass words. Pen, for example is der Kugelschreiber, and the United States is die Vereinigten Staaten. The perky sounding woman on the CD’s made it sound so easy to say these words, and she was not judgmental when I constantly screwed them up. “Keep trying until you master these difficult phrases,” she assured me. “Lady, I’m so screwed,” I told her.

Mark Twain was no help, either. Huck Finn’s creator has a famous piece called The Awful German Language. America’s greatest satirist riffs on all manner of permutations on why I was having such a hard time pronouncing half the things I heard or read. If Twain had been alive, he would also have gotten a kick out of my accent, which sounded like a cross between Arnold Schwarzenegger’s voice and Danny DeVito’s Jersey honk. It took me several days just to properly hiss the word for I, which is ich.

In five weeks, however, I became rather adept at German. I learned the difference between vierzig and vierzehn, how to ask for directions, who, what, when, where and why, all my pronouns, and most names for food. I committed to memory how to ask for beer. I knew how to interact at the hotel, on the street, in the office and in the bars. V sounds like F and W sounds like V. G sounds like K at the end of words, so Guten Tag is actually Guten Tak. I figured out how to be sociable, to introduce myself, to flirt, and how to ask for things well beyond the MPAA’s PG-13 rating. Since I expected to continue my track record of being hit on by men in every country and continent I have visited, I learned from Berlitz that bist du schwul means “Are you gay?”

Most importantly, I learned the words I did not want to hear. I speak fluent Spanish, halfway decent French, pathetic Japanese and, as I would soon discover, average German. The first word I learned in all these languages is nigger. In fact, I can accuse myself of coonery in 9 different languages. Food items I despise or am allergic to were also committed to memory, as was every single cuss word I could muster. And yes, I mastered saying die Vereinigten Staaten.

“If it is too hard to say die Vereinigten Staaten,” said the Berlitz lady after I’d mastered it, “you can just say die U.S.A.”

“Thanks a lot, lady!” I growled at the car stereo.

The day before I flew Lufthansa to Munich, I went to a German restaurant. I spoke German, ordering for myself and my best friend. I made small talk with the waitress, telling her I was going to Germany and wished to practice what I’d learned. She was very nice to me, gently correcting my pronunciation and offering up more conversational ways of saying things. She provided me a sense of confidence for which I’ll always be thankful, because I wound up speaking German a lot in Landshut whenever I went out on the town.

Normally, I have a kickoff phone call with my customers. The Landshut project was an exception, as I was in California prior to heading to Germany. With a 9 hour time difference, phone calls were going to be problematic. So my EMEA project manager introduced the client to me via E-mail. My client contact, Ralf, recommended a hotel for me and even arranged for a car to pick me up from Munich airport. Call me crazy, but I was most excited by this; I always saw people holding up signs with surnames on them at the airport, and I’ve ALWAYS wanted someone to do that for me. You haven’t arrived in the travel world until your name is broadcast on a shitty cardboard sign being held up by a disinterested looking driver. With my luck, my name would be misspelled and, when I pointed that out, the driver would tear up the sign before trying to run me over with his car.

Ralf told me I’d be training 8 people, and that they all understood English. I told him I’d taken the time to learn as much German as I could, and would be willing to employ it where necessary. Thrice in our Email correspondence, Ralf suggested that he come pick me up at the hotel on Monday morning to bring me to the office. I found this odd, as the office appeared to be on the same block as the hotel. But the numbers were far apart. so I assumed the distance was not walkable. We were going to start at 9, but Ralf wanted to pick me up at 7:30 or 8. I wrote back suggesting 0800 hours and he agreed. “Am greatly looking forward to meeting you,” he wrote.

On the flight to Munich, I plugged in my CD player and listened to all four Berlitz CD’s again. I looked through my books and also practiced a little with my seatmate before he went to sleep. Upon landing, I couldn’t wait to get through customs so I could see my name in lights--I mean, on a sign. Sure enough, there was a gentleman in the baggage claim area holding up my father’s last name on what looked like one of those cardboard inserts you find in undershirt packages. It was ghetto, to be honest, but I’m ghetto too, so it was copasetic.

My driver didn’t speak too much English, and he was as hesitant to use what he knew as I was to speak German to him. But I broke the ice, and when he realized I knew something about his native tongue, he went off. I tried to follow him as he told me about Landshut and his family. I told him, as best I could, about myself and asked him about the Autobahn. It was something of a farce, as the difference in speed between his dialogue and mine was like the hare vs. the tortoise. But we understood each other, and I even coaxed a little English out of him in spots.

At the hotel, which was a small place with four stories and no elevator, the front desk did not speak English at all. Thankfully, Berlitz Lady had beaten into me all manner of hotel dialogues. The woman at the front desk was dressed in traditional Bavarian garb, and she told me about the breakfast they offered every morning and that my room was on the fourth floor. The word for room was easy for me to remember—Zimmer, like Hans Zimmer. Einzelzimmer, in fact, a single room. And this room was TINY!

In the room was a small single bed, an area for me to sit, my TV and desk, a tiny closet and my bathroom. There was an apple on the desk, a fitting tribute to my reason for being there. An apple for the teacher, I thought. There was also a banana. I didn’t know whom a banana would be for, so I said “and a banana for the pervert.”

My room didn’t have an iron, and since I had suits to wear, I called down to the front desk and asked for a bügeln. A tall German gentleman, about 20, brought it to me. I ironed my suit pants, jacket and shirt, hanging them in the little cubbyhole that served as my closet. Then, I went out into the street in search of food.

The front desk wrote down some directions for me to find the center of town (thank God, as it was easier for me to read and consider than listen and interpret). It turned out to be a wonderful area I’d explore more during my week, but my first impression was somewhat jarring. There were all these old buildings, hundreds of years old. From their second stories up, they were these wonderful old buildings. On their ground levels, however, were invasions of the current time: McDonalds, banks, H&M’s.

Most things were closed, as this was Sunday, so I was faced with either Mickey D’s, The German Version or finding something else to eat. I went to Mickey D’s, which is customary for me: I’ve gone to McDonalds in every country I’ve found one, and the food is always better than it is in America. They also always have weird shit. In Tokyo, they had Shrimp McNuggets and McSushi. The German Mickey D’s had burgers named after American cities. They had the New York burger, the Chicago burger and so on. Leave it to Ronald McDonald to make me feel homesick—and I’d just gotten to Germany. I hate clowns.

Since I was out, I decided to try and find the office building. It was on the same street as the hotel, and though the address numbers were about 2000 apart, the office was 5 blocks away. “Does Ralf think I’m stupid?” I asked myself. “Granted, I’m not a native German speaker, but I can look at the street signs!” And why did we need an hour to walk 5 blocks? I chalked it up to German efficiency; they like to be on time.

When I got back to my room, I turned on the TV. Flipping the dial, I settled on a channel with a German stand-up comedian. Half his act was in English, the other half in German. Shockingly, I understood the German parts, and the guy was pretty damn funny. When his show went to commercial, I got a taste of just how much more liberal German TV is than American free TV.

Basic Instinct was coming on Freitag (that’s Friday) at 8. The commercial comes on, and the first scene of it is Sharon Stone uncrossing her legs. Uncensored. “Jeez!” I said in shock. “Now I don’t have to watch the movie!” The commercial was a tightly edited montage of uncensored murder and sex from the movie. If CBS got upset over a titty, their transmitter would have spontaneously combusted after this commercial, and the German phone sex commercials would have made Edward R. Murrow dig himself out of the grave. This naked woman holding a phone appeared on my TV, imploring me in German to call her for a good time. “Why the hell do I have to call you?” I asked the TV. “I can SEE you!” Every commercial for the next 15 minutes was naked women holding phones. One of them even sang a song in English, her awful breast implants staying motionless as she danced around. The optical effect of her moving body and stationary tits made me dizzy.

I liked Germany already.

I’m surprised I didn’t fall out of that little ass bed during the night. It was a comfortable piece of furniture, but also the smallest bed I’ve ever inhabited. My Blackberry woke me up at 7 AM. I did the three S’s (shit, shower, shave) and put on my suit. While tying my tie, the phone rang. It was the front desk telling me that Ralf was downstairs waiting for me. “Danke,” I said before hanging up. I checked my tie, made sure I didn’t miss any spots shaving my head and face, grabbed my apple and my PC and headed downstairs.

I saw Ralf before he saw me. A tall, blond gentleman with a nicely groomed goatee. Like me, he was dressed in a suit. I’m a tie junkie, so whenever I see a nice tie, I want to know who made it and where I can get it. I also noticed a nice cologne emanating from his person. I don’t normally wear cologne, but this smelled like it might give women amnesia about the way I look. Of course, if I asked Ralf about his cologne and his tie, he was liable to respond with “bist du schwul?” Maybe I’ll ask later, I thought.

Approaching the front desk, I met the same woman who checked me in the day before. She remembered me, not a hard feat considering there probably aren’t too many bald headed, one-eyed Black men in Landshut. She pointed to Ralf, gesturing that he was the party waiting for me. I went up to Ralf and introduced myself in English.

“Hello, I’m Odie,” I said to his back.

Ralf turned around to address me. When he did, I saw the smile on his face immediately disappear. In fact, he looked stunned, then disappointed. He tried to play it off, smiling uneasily, but the damage had already been done. I’d seen his initial reaction. My hand seemed to hang in the air for an eternity before he took it. He was staring at me in what I swore was disbelief.

“Hallo, I am Ralf,” he said. “Shall we go?”

During the walk, Ralf said nothing to me. No small talk or anything. His gait was that of a dead man walking. I was still too stunned to speak. My mind raced. What was the issue? Is it my eye? Then I got paranoid. Is it my skin color? It could only be one of those two things. Ralf knew I was American, but my name doesn’t exactly scream Negro, and how would anyone who has not seen me know I have a blind eye? It had to be one of those two things, and considering that I kept catching Ralf looking at me out the corner of his eye, it had to be something relating to my physical appearance. He couldn’t be dissing my suit, because I looked damn good and my shirt and tie matched. I put my sunglasses on and continued the walk.

When we got to the office, Ralf used his card to open the door. Then he spoke to me for the first time since we left the hotel. “It’s a lot of stairs,” he told me. I got my exercise this week. Between the four flights at the hotel and the five flights at the office, I must have gone up 3 million stairs during my tenure. At the top of the stairs was a conference room. We entered, and in the room around the table were seven gentlemen, all impeccably dressed in suits and ties. They looked like GQ magazine had come to life. I walked into the room, and Ralf told the guys, “This is Odie.”

Everyone looked at me, and every single face in the room registered the same way Ralf’s did when I told him who I was. They looked at each other and then back at me.

The room went deathly silent.

“Oh fuck this,” I thought. “They’re reacting like this because I’m Black! I have sunglasses on! They can’t see my eye! Son of a bitch! It has to be that.”

There was some German muttering. I was too distraught to try translating it—I was just listening for that word. Blazing Saddles popped into my head:

“The Teacher’s a Ni-(train whistle)!”

Ralf tapped on the table and asked for everyone’s attention. He had each of his team introduce themselves and tell me how much experience they had with the software. Each man spoke, in English, and while they were not disrespectful, they all sounded sad. When the introductions got to me, I spoke of my many years of experience as a programmer, and my 3 years at my current company. I assured them I knew the software and that we’d have a fun, informative class. I kept coming back to my knowledge on the subjects I’d be teaching, as if to reassure them.

An awkward silence filled the room as Ralf helped me set up my laptop with his projector. I started projecting the slides and talking. I only use the slides for the students’ benefit; I rarely read them, opting instead to freely improvise about the projected topic in my lecture. I do exercises on my PC and on the whiteboard, and I also assign exercises to the class.

About an hour into the class, one of the students raised his hand, interrupting me.

“Yes?” I asked. “Do you have a question?”

“Um,” he began, “I don’t mean to offend…”

“Oh shit,” my brain said, “here it comes…”

The businessman paused, looked down, and said in a low voice:

“But we thought you were going to be a girl.”

I blurted out my response before my brain could censor it. “What the hell gave you THAT idea?”

Ralf put his hand up, silencing his colleague. He turned to me.

“Odie is usually a hot French girl,” he said. “At least over here.”

“But, you spoke to me on the Kickoff Ca—" I began before remembering that this customer had not had the standard Kickoff Call. We’d done all our correspondence via Email. I was relieved that my skin color and my eye had nothing to do with Ralf’s response, and a little embarrassed for thinking it. Ralf showed up early at the hotel because he thought he might get some from Odie the Hot French Chick! In Europe, businessmen still dress up, but I bet these guys put on their best suits in preparation for Odie the Hot French Chick.

“Odie is usually short for Odile,” said another gentlemen. Odile, like Odell, is a Creole name. Odile is, in fact, the feminine version of my name, as I would later learn. Looking out at the sea of disappointed faces, horny programming nerds who cleaned up real nicely in the hopes of some spank bank material in the guise of a software trainer, I felt horrible. I’d never wished I was a girl before, but so help me, I felt so bad that I wished I could have turned into Josephine Baker. With my banana skirt and my bare, perky sepia toned tits, I’d dance around the room singing “JAVA-JAVA-JAVA-JAVA-JAVA-JAVA-OOOH! JAVA-JAVA-JAVA-JAVA-JAVA-JAVA-OOOH!”

That wasn’t going to happen.

“I’m sorry, boys,” I said. “But even if I went back to the hotel and put on a dress, I won’t be a hot French chick. Most programmers are men.” They nodded. With our misunderstanding finally resolved, I taught my class for the rest of the day.

The next morning, I put on another suit and walked to the office on my own. After climbing about 4,000 stairs, I once again found myself in the conference room. This time, however, I was met by a bunch of far shabbier looking guys. Nobody had a suit on but me. Hell, some of them didn’t even have shoes on. They were wearing flip flops and wife beaters. One guy’s hair screamed out for a comb. It looked like these guys had just rolled out of bed!

“Ain't this a bitch!” I thought. “They got all decked out for me yesterday, but now that they know the truth, they come in looking like THIS?! I’m not hot enough for them to continue to look DECENT?!!” I was mad as hell.

“You don’t have to dress up,” said Ralf. “We tend to wear jeans here, unlike most German companies.” Jeans? I thought “That fool over there looks like he’s in his boxer shorts!” I’m exaggerating, but only slightly. Yesterday, this conference room looked like Baptist church. Today it looked like Animal House.

No matter. I taught the class and, at the end of the week, Ralf and his group were comfortable enough with me to take me out to a biergarten and show me a good time. They gave me lessons on Bavarian beer and cuisine, and we laughed and joked like old friends. We got real drunk, but even through beer goggles, I still didn’t look like a hot French chick. And it was just as well; they wouldn’t have paid attention to the lecture if I had been Odile and not Odell.

After this experience, whenever my EMEA project manager requested me to do a project for his European customers, I always reminded him:

“Make sure you tell the customer that I’m a boy!”

Letters to the Audience

2011-06-25T02:22:00.004-04:00

by Odienator

Audience-warning letters from movie theaters are not new. In my Blazing Saddles review, I mentioned that the General Cinemas Hudson Mall Theaters in Jersey City put a disclaimer on their doors warning patrons about the film's offensive content. They said they took no responsibility if the film upset you. When Cruising, the Al Pacino/William Friedkin movie passed the MPAA with an R, some theaters put a warning sign up stating that the film "should be rated X." I recall one adorning the doors of my hometown's State Theater. And when The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo played Cincinnati's Esquire Theater, their website warned patrons that the film was unrated but was violent enough for an NC-17.

Even cable TV got into the act. When I was flipping through my On Demand a while back, I noticed the description for Lars von Trier's Antichrist was one line long: "This Film Has Extremely Graphic Violence." No other plot description was given because a description of what happens in Antichrist would require a warning of its own.

So I'm not surprised that the Avon Theater in Stamford, Connecticut posted a warning sign for its patrons. What is surprising is that it was necessary at all. Here is the letter. See if you can spot why the reason is a surprise to me.

The Avon is apparently an art theater. Had it been a multiplex, this might have been warranted. Multiplexes are for the general, unwashed masses of moviegoers. Art houses are usually for snooty, artsy assholes who know what they're in for before they step to the ticket booth. Why would they need a warning, especially one for the long-awaited Terrence Malick movie? The man is to the art house crowd what Oprah is to women. If he made a remotely bad movie, there would be mass suicides. It would be The Happening Part Two.

Perhaps the art house crowd in Stamford are a tad less snobbish than the average indie movie crowd. Maybe they want more entertainment and less pretention. After all, Stamford is the home of the Maury Show. Or maybe a bunch of the unwashed multiplex masses discovered that the one-time sexiest man alive was playing over at that Avon Theater, and they went in expecting Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Whatever the reason, the Avon Theater felt compelled to post that sign.

Personally, I like it. It provides a public service, but is also reverse psychology. It's saying "ooh! This movie may be TOO much for your feeble mind to handle!" For a certain type of person, this is a dare. They'll go see it, and in order to best the sign, they won't leave. If they hate it, they'll look bad if they ask for a refund. Smart move, Avon Theater!

It's such a smart move that I think ALL movie theaters should post warning signs. If you visit my theater, the Cineplex Odie-On, you might find these letters posted on the glass doors:

Dear Patrons,

Please be advised that Thor is a piece of shit. Granted, it is directed by Kenneth Branagh, but not the one you remember from Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing. This is the one from Wild Wild West. Thor also stars the Anthony Hopkins from such 70's films as Audrey Rose and Magic, and the Natalie Portman who proved that doubles did more than just dance for her in Black Swan. They acted for her too.

Remember that the Odie-On has a strict NO REFUND policy. You got what you deserved for even considering to see a movie about some blonde asshole from outer space swinging a hammer.

Thank you.

Dear Patrons,

In response to a spate of audience members leaving the theater with bite marks and torn clothing, the Odie-On advises you not to sit in the first five rows of the theater during screenings of The Fighter. Not only do we have a strict NO REFUND policy, we are also not an HMO. We will not be responsible if your body gets between Melissa Leo's teeth and the scenery.

Thank you.

Loyal Customers,

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is a challenging film. It is non-linear, and at times may be as hard to follow as it is to say Apichatpong Weerasethakul. You may be compelled to leave before it is over. But the Odie-On is proud to show this film, and we are so behind it that if you violate our NO REFUNDS policy, management will escort you back into the theater and tie you to a seat.

We provide this service for your own good. Uncle Boonmee may SEEM incredibly boring, but you will want to stick around. Trust us. You will want to stay. Three words, folks:

Coochie-eating fish.

You know you wanna see that.

Thank you.

Attention Ticket Holders for Transformers: Dark of the Moon:

Please be advised that the usher ripping your ticket is going to kick you in your balls before allowing you in the theater. If you are attending a 3-D screening of this film, the owner of Cineplex Odie-On will also kick you in the balls because he can no longer perceive 3-D. If you have brought a girl to this movie, we will separate you and send her to Meek's Cutoff as punishment for dating a dolt.

Also be advised that there will be NO REFUNDS when you realize Megan Fox is not in this sequel. You will just have to beat off to images of Optimus Prime.

Thank you.

A Tree of Life Meditation

2011-05-31T15:22:00.000-04:00

by Odienator

Unlike the twentysomethings who jumped on the Terrence Malick bandwagon with The Thin Red Line, I don’t worship his post 70’s output in a manner best reserved for the Second Coming. I was underwhelmed by The New World and downright hostile toward The Thin Red Line’s contrapuntal narration. It only infuriates said bandwagoners further when I cite that The Thin Red Line, with its footage of catapulting soldiers flung heavenward by explosions while the soundtrack rambled on with Hallmark card bullshit about butterflies and love, is Malick’s worst movie. “Who thinks about butterflies when hot shrapnel is flying into one's ass?” I asked in my C+ review of Line.

I am sure this will get me lots of the standard “you don’t understand Malick’s genius yada yada yada” in the comments section, to which I say spare me because I DO get it. Badlands and Days of Heaven are two of the best films of the 70’s, the latter of which is my favorite and gets richer every time I’ve seen it; the former never ceases to disturb me to my core. While Malick’s latter two are visually imagined in sometimes achingly beautiful compositions, they just don’t involve me the way his prior two films do. Even my mentor and friend Matt Zoller Seitz, whose defense of Malick is worthy of Clarence Darrow, couldn’t get me to change my mind.

Leave it to Malick himself to pull me back into the fold. The Tree of Life is a thesis statement that also serves as cheat notes for this auteur’s body of work. It says “in case you’ve missed it, THIS is what I’ve been trying to say.” Granted, one still needs to dig deeply to understand all that is happening, but The Tree of Life is as blatant a period as I’ve ever seen on the sentence that describes a director’s work. It melds the director’s latter, more visual meditations on the universe with his former films’ narrative exploration of how miniscule our place is in it. It also does something for me that the few rational people with whom I’ve debated The Thin Red Line and The New World said those films did for them: it lulled me into a state of meditative recollection. My brain went off on tangents of my own memories during The Tree of Life, which was terrifying but not at all surprising. Movies about brothers tend to make me reflect on being the oldest out of four sons.

So I shall not discuss how great the lead three actors are, how visually stunning it is, and how bad the ending is; I’m going to save that for another time. Instead, I will send you down some of the tangents I explored while watching Malick’s best film since my favorite of his, Days of Heaven. You can figure out what may have triggered these on your own.

Why I Hate The Village People's YMCA

I drowned when I was 5 years old. My Kindergarten teacher took us on a field trip to the YMCA, and since I couldn’t swim, she sat me on the edge of the pool so I could put my feet in the water. Some punk ass kid came and pushed me into the pool. I do not remember how long I thrashed around, or even if I came up to the surface once I was submerged. I do remember it took forever for me to die. Water filled my lungs, giving me both a lifelong fear of the water and of suffocation.

They said I was dead for several minutes before being revived. Between losing and regaining consciousness (I can still taste the water I threw up), I went somewhere. It was the crappiest, most unimaginative out of body experience a writer could have: I stood in a freezing room that was covered in white bathroom tiles. That’s it. It was cold, so I obviously wasn’t in Hell. At 5, what could I have done to earn Hell? Whether my “out of body experience” was a lot warmer when I died at 34 is a story for another time. But when I told this story to a devoutly religious friend of mine, she said “you didn’t see anything because Jesus was behind you doing this.” Then she put her thumbs into her ears, wiggled her fingers and stuck out her tongue. “Then He kicked you in your butt and sent you back here.”

Now that is a visual I wish I had seen.

My Mother’s Words: The Clean Version

“I have no favorites,” my mother often stated. “I love you all the same.” “LIES!!!” my brain would always utter. Not about the “I love you all the same” part. I believe that. About the favorites part, well, she deserved some lightning in her ass because she did have a favorite kid and it was not me.

My Mother’s Favorite Kid

My brother, and I won’t say which one (sorry brothers, and an even bigger “sorry” to my sister) and I were playing outside on one of the numerous, cracked up sidewalks of Jersey City. I was pushing him on some Fisher Price contraption, a truck that had a horn and a lever you could pull to make it go “VERROOOOOMMM!” I cop to pushing the toy a little too hard, but the faster I went, the happier my 18-month old brother got. We hit a particularly jagged piece of the sidewalk, and my brother flew up into the air so high that he blocked out the Sun. He landed with a thud on the ground. “BAM!!!” said the ground.

I can’t spell the noise my brother made, but it was loud enough to wake the dead.

Something Like This, but Not Quite

My bodily inspection of the yowling kid yielded a scrape and a bruise on his shoulder, but nothing else. It is de Lawd’s penchant for irony that positioned this accident in front of a row of switch bushes, the same bushes used to beat ghetto asses for generations. My mother was going to send me to the scene of the crime to get a piece of one of those bushes if my brother didn’t quiet down. Panicked, I knelt down and looked at my brother. His eyes were fire hydrants of tears, his mouth a siren not yet completely filled with teeth. I looked into those watery eyes.

“Please,” I begged. “Mommy is going to kill me.”

My brother looked back into my eyes and I swear there was something there, some sense of recognition, the genesis of the brotherly connection we would later use to occasionally team up for mischief when he was older. He shut up immediately.

It remains the only time my brother saved my ass.

Firecrackers and Fingers

Kids are mean little bastards. My cousins and I sometimes hung out with other neighborhood boys, roaming the streets in search of games of tops, three flights up or stickball. Occasionally, someone would have firecrackers, cherry bombs or cap guns. I liked the cap guns (I especially liked smelling the exploded caps papers, which is just sick) but I was always afraid of firecrackers. I liked hearing them explode, but I could never light one for fear it would blow up and I’d look like a reject from a Tex Avery cartoon.

Some of the neighborhood kids would light these things and throw them at animals. Dogs behind gates, pigeons, cats, all of whom would thankfully get out of the way before they blew up. One of the biggest perpetrators of this lit a cherry bomb (or something to that effect) with plans on throwing it at perhaps the only dog in my ‘hood that didn’t chase us. It was such a sweet tempered animal, with sad eyes and a perpetually cocked head. It looked as if it really gave a shit about you from behind that gate. If it could talk, it would ask how your day was and offer you better advice than Dear Abby.

The kid lit this explosive device when the dog wasn’t paying attention to us. But right before he threw it, the dog suddenly turned our direction. It cocked its head. “Do you really want to hurt me?” its face seemed to say. I saw it. That kid must have seen it, too, because the split second he reconsidered his action was the moment his hand exploded.

Baptist Funerals are in my DNA

I gave up on organized religion for good in 1999, for reasons that are (you guessed it) a story for another time. I did, however, visit Baptist church after that for a couple of funerals. If you were raised Baptist, Baptist funerals are in your DNA. It almost feels like you know what’s coming before it happens. The thing I hate most about them isn’t when somebody throws themselves on the coffin (reason #1 why I’m being cremated) or when “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” gets sung (reason #2 why I’m being cremated). I hate these funerals because the pastor takes this opportunity to try to recruit for his church by scaring the shit out of you with the specter of Death. When my aunt died, it was almost as if I’d lost my mother. At the funeral, the pastor pointed at her coffin and told the congregation we needed to get right with God. We could start by coming to his church on Sunday. I wanted to punch him in his face. I damn near choked the woman who told me this was God’s plan and I should be happy I have 7 more aunts.

My Mother’s Words, Not So Clean

Thank God my mother didn't wear these.

My mother used to say she had eyes in the back of her head. She also said if she saw something with those eyes of which she did not approve, she’d either beat me ‘til I shit blue ink or stomp a mudhole in my ass. Mom made the latter threat for the 9 bazillionth time on the Christmas Day of my 16th year. It ended an argument we had been having, or so I thought. Mom turned around to walk away, and I rolled my eyes at her. My Mom hit me upside the head with her hand. I never saw her face, which indicated she had not turned around. It was the last time my mother ever laid a hand on me, and the first time that hand was above my waist. She’d later slug her favorite child in the chest hard enough to send him flying when he was 16, so thank heaven for the small favor of not being Mom’s Choice Kid. Yeah, he deserved it.

Things We Lost In the Fire

During turbulent times in the house I grew up in, I envisioned the day we’d all move out and the house would be demolished. Years after we’d grown up, my parents sold the house and moved someplace far more friendly. The church to whom they’d sold the house wanted the land for some expansion project. I was finally going to get my wish. Like in my childhood fantasies, I would get a lawn chair and some popcorn and watch them knock the house down.

Before any of this could transpire, the house burned down in spectacular fashion. It was on the news, and in the papers. (I just found footage of it on fucking YouTube, for God's sake!) Suddenly it hit me: All I’d been thinking about were the bad times in my life that occurred while I lived there. I had somehow forgotten that the best of times had occurred there too, and by virtue of spending all my teenage years and some of the years prior in that house, most of life’s discoveries had a tie to it. I was bound to that physical place by the majority of my childhood memories and all my adolescent ones. Up in smoke they went.

Well, Only Figuratively. Memories Do Remain.

The year after my Mom slapped the taste out of my mouth for Christmas, she, my Pops and my entire family went to Atlanta to see my uncle. My Mom was adamant about me going, but my Pops talked her out of it. Maybe he thought, at 17, I was man enough to be “home alone.” Maybe it was because a few weeks prior, the crackhead next door had broken into our house and stolen the VCR, and my Pops didn’t want to come home to just a foundation and a doorknob. Regardless, for the first time in my entire life, I had full run of an empty house. I ran up and down the stairs, yelling for joy before marveling at the quiet. No noisy siblings, no bickering parents, no yelling at me from Mom. Just quiet. And joy. So much so that, when the Great Love of my Life asked if she could come over, I told her HELL NO. Not even sex was better than this. You try living in a house with four little kids, all day, every day, for almost a decade, and you’ll see my point of view. I could screw next week.

I wound up cleaning the house from top to bottom, and spending the week watching movies.

It’s only fitting I end here, as this memory was inspired by my favorite scene in The Tree of Life.

Here’s to finding your own meditations courtesy of Terrence Malick!

Released Today: Altman's Last Movie

2011-05-25T00:00:00.033-04:00

by Odienator

According to the imDB, Robert Altman's last movie, A Prairie Home Companion, opened five years ago today in some podunk town in Georgia. (The wide release date was some time in June.) Almost five years ago, I wrote a piece on the film for The House Next Door. It begins:

In Bob Fosse's All That Jazz (1979) and Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion (2006), the filmmakers respectively invoke death to gently chastise viewers for the imaginary crime of not affording them the appreciation they feel they deserve. Both works cry out, "You're gonna miss me when I'm gone." Yet for all their surface similarities, they are oceans apart in tone.

All That Jazz, one of my favorite movies, is meandering, infuriating and surreal, packed with dance numbers and music. Scripted by Robert Alan Aurthur, and owing Federico Fellini's 8 ½ a debt too large to repay, Fosse reimagines the musical drama of his own life, sometimes employing original cast members (Ann Reinking plays a character based on herself), while crafting a self-congratulatory piece that screams "I am Bob Fosse! I am breathing down the Grim Reaper's neck because I'm a drug-addicted workaholic! Partake in my world of cynical Broadway smut, and celebrate me before it's too late!" Prairie is also meandering, infuriating, surreal and full of music. Owing All That Jazz a similarly huge debt, Altman builds a dramatic frame around a facsimile of Keillor's long-running radio program and some of its recurring castmembers and characters, while crafting a self-congratulatory piece that declares, "I am Robert Altman! The Grim Reaper is breathing down my neck! Partake in my world of cynical Midwestern sing-a-longs and celebrate me before it's too late!"

Turns out Altman was right. The rest of the piece can be found here.

Doing the Dougie With De Lawd

2011-05-21T13:12:00.003-04:00

by Odienator, A Sinner.

Happy Rapture Day!

In case you’ve been under a rock, or haven’t walked through a subway station in NYC, today is the day Harold Camping says the world will end. This is the day De Lawd has chosen to return, bringing about the Armageddon that doesn’t feature Bruce Willis. But before you start dancing around like Chris Penn, singing “Let’s Hear it for The Lord,” you should be aware that this date does not exist in the Bible. In fact, if I remember my Baptist Sunday School training correctly, the Gospels say no one will know the hour of return. Camping, like far too many Christians, ignores the parts of the Bible that are inconvenient, opting instead to tell SfGate that he “has scrutinized the Bible for almost 70 years and…has developed a mathematical system to interpret prophecies hidden within the Good Book.” As a math major, and the world’s worst Christian, I take double offense at this claim. Camping pulled this date out of his ass, much like he pulled the prior date he said the world would end. He was wrong then, and he’ll be wrong today.

Besides, I don’t know why all these televangelists and ministers are hastening Jesus’ return. The first thing He’s going to do when He gets here is to ask them “where’s all that money you raised for me?” You know damn well they don’t have it, and that can only lead to lightning bolt enemas.

The world is gonna end today for somebody, but it’ll have nothing to do with Camping Calculus and everything to do with that person’s number being pulled in the Great Beyond. Now Serving!! For the rest of us, folks who will be here tomorrow, here’s a Rapture Playlist for you to load into your iPod. If I’m wrong, and the world does end today, at least you’ll have some good music to play should you decide to do the Dougie with De Lawd.

Rapture, by Blondie

Of course, we have to start here. Celebrating its 30th anniversary, Blondie’s hit rarely gets mentioned as the first rap-infused hit by both a White artist and a woman. Deborah Harry’s excellent vocal and the song’s bouncy and strange music far overshadow the fact that the rap part is hokey as hell. Harry pulls it off, but making sense of it is likely to cause nosebleeds. (Editor note: The author knows every single word to this song, so he’s fulla shit.) Sampled later by my favorite rapper, KRS-ONE, Rapture still holds up as both a mile marker on the highway of rap history and fodder for an occasional remake. As a bonus, watch this video to see where Flavor Flav got his style.

Caught up in the Rapture, by Anita Baker

If I believed the world were ending today, I wouldn’t be here with you. I’d be fucking everything that was breathing, human and above the age of consent. (With that said, I might be with you…) I’m going to Hell anyway, may as well secure my place there. Anita Baker, like other R&B/Soul artists too numerous to mention, can help set the mood for my final acts of sin. Baker’s an appropriate artist here; her entire album is called Rapture. There are worse musical accompaniments while sliding into Hell with your eyes wide open (to quote my mother). Speaking of my eternal resting place:

Hell, by Squirrel Nut Zippers

May be the happiest-sounding song about eternal damnation I have ever heard.

Highway to Hell, by AC/DC

Far more of you will be on this than on the Stairway to Heaven. Satan himself provided me with the video clip for this; it’s one of those awful movie tie in videos. I’m so evil. Speaking of God’s Stairmaster:

Stairway to Heaven, by the O’Jays

When Rat from Fast Times at Ridgemont High mentions Stairway to Heaven as great makeout music, us Black kids thought he meant THIS version. Our bad!

Spirit in the Sky, by Norman Greenbaum

“I never been a sinner, I never sinned, I got a friend in Jesus,” sang Greenbaum. We’ll see! The opening riff in this song gets my vote for what should be playing when Jesus descends from the sky.

Gotta Serve Somebody, Bob Dylan

“It may be the Devil, it may be the Lord, but you hafta serve somebody,” sings Mr. Dylan. It’s too late to take Bob’s advice, but you might find out today if you made the right choice. Dylan’s writing ability is a gift from Heaven. His vocal ability is from the other place for sure.

Heaven, by Bebe and CeCe Winans

I could have chosen Bryan Adams’ Heaven, but even I’m not that sadistic. Bebe and CeCe threw a few extra banana peels on my descent into Hell because they had a different slow jam record I used to screw to before I realized it was about God. Thanks, guys.

Heaven is a Place on Earth, Belinda Carlisle

You know my love of the 80’s wasn’t going to go unnoticed here. But wouldn’t it just SUCK if this song’s title were actually true? Where would Heaven be? Iowa, like in Field of Dreams? Disney World? Newark, NJ? Y’all better hope Jesus says “WRONG, Miss Go Go Thing!” to Belinda Carlisle.

Why Me, Lord? by Kris Kristofferson

If De Lawd is anything like my mother, the answer will be “Because I said so.”

Happy Apocalypse Now!

Happy Muva's Day!

2011-05-08T11:41:00.000-04:00

Mother's Day, 1977.

My mother and I were at the local drug store picking up a prescription for my little brother. Since it was Mother's Day, I asked Mom for some money to buy her a card. She gave me 2 dollars and sent me to the card section. "Turn the card over," she told me, "so you can see how much it costs before you buy it." I ran to the cards and, after some roaming, found the Mother's Day cards. The section looked as if a bomb hit it, decimated by a mad rush from husbands and sons prone to last-minute decisions. What remained was a small series of kid-friendly tributes to Mother, which was appropriate for 7 year old me.

The old woman who worked the counter for her pharmacist husband appeared. "You need help, honey?" she asked me. By then I'd picked out a card. It was the Las Vegas of Mother's Day cards, big and gaudy, shouting out sentiment in bold, neon-like statements. "To The Best Mom Ever, From Your Son" it trumpeted on the front, covered in that horrid glitter powder that lodged in the fingerprints, lungs and floors of the card's recipient. When you opened the card, the little boy on the front of the card popped out of it, arms outstretched. "Hope you have a very special day!" read the sentiment underneath him. It too was covered in enough glitter powder to cause black lung disease. The card cost one dollar.

I handed the card to the pharmacist's wife. "Can you please ring this up for me?" I asked her. "Sure," she said. "And aren't you a sweetheart, buying a card for your mother?" My face beamed--like a sweetheart. "May I read it?" she asked.

"Uh-huh," I said.

She read the front of the card. When she opened it, she threw her head back in surprise, then laughed heartily, the bluish-grey hair on her head shaking with her joy. God bless her; she'd given me the reaction I'd hoped my mother would have, and I think Mrs. Pharmacist knew what she was doing. Regardless, her joy and surprise felt genuine. "Oh, honey," she began, "your mother will love this. Let's ring it up."

We walked toward the counter, which was 2 aisles away from the cards. "My son," she said, subconsciously touching her heart in time with the words, "is a real pain in the butt." I giggled. "But when he was your age, he would give me such wonderful cards for Mother's Day, just like this one. And I cherished them all. They always made me forget for a moment...that he was and is a PAIN IN THE BUTT!!"

As we rounded the corner, she saw my mother waiting at the counter. The pharmacist's wife gasped. "Oh dear!" she told me, "we can't have her see this before you give it to her. Wait here." She walked to my mother and I watched them have a conversation. I couldn't hear what they said, but my mother nodded and left the counter. I was then summoned to the register.

"How much is this, sweetie," she asked me. I turned the card over and read out "One dollar." She rang it up. "With tax, that'll be One-oh-six." I had two dollars. As I handed her the cash, I noticed the candy section in front of us. I picked up a Hershey's with Almonds, my mother's candy bar of choice back when she ate candy. The little sticker from the price gun said ".35." I put the bar on the counter. "Oh, this would be such a nice extra!" said Mrs. Pharmacist enthusiastically. "Would you like me to wrap it, so she can REALLY be surprised?" Of course I did!

She disappeared for a moment, returning with some Mother's Day based tissue paper and tape. It must have taken her 20 seconds to wrap the candy bar. "OK, young man, if we add the candy bar, that makes it a dolluh fawty two with tax." I nodded. "The wrapping paper's on me," she said with a wink. She handed me back 58 cents and then went to get my mother.

By this time, the pharmacist had finished filing my brother's prescription. He brought it to the counter in time for my mother to pay for it. As they handled that business, the pharmacist's wife came around the counter to address me. She knelt down, something I am sure took great caution, so she could be on the same level as I was. "Now make sure you wait til you get home to give your Mom her present," she whispered as she handed me the bag. "I will!" I told her excitedly. "And remember," she added, "be nice to your mother." She then shook her finger in time with the words: "Don't be like my son--a real PAIN IN THE BUTT!"

To be honest with you, I don't remember my mother's reaction to the card. I am sure she ate the Hershey's bar, and I know she kept the card. When my folks sold the house I grew up in, my mother's closet yielded several small shoe boxes worth of mementos given her by her brood of five. In the Odie box was this card, still gaudy, still big, still Las Vegas and still covered in that infernal glitter. I still have its remnants in my fingerprints.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom, from your eldest ass pain.

Note: I've already written the definitive piece on my mother. You can find that at the House Next Door.

From Colored Boys Who Have Considered Tyler Perry

2011-04-27T09:53:00.000-04:00

(This is an E-mail dialog between Odienator and Steven Boone of Big Media Vandalism.)

Odie:

It's been too long since we last had a Big Media Vandalism tete-a-tete, and I've got just the troublemaking topic for us: Emmitt Perry, Jr. Our reading audience will know him by his stage first name, Tyler.

Dissed by Black directors for engaging in "coonery," and dismissed by the same critics who'd lick the asses of even worse directors channeling in mumblecore, Tyler Perry has nonetheless managed to succeed. Like Roger Corman, he has his own studio AND all his movies have made money. In the past 10 years, I've read numerous books on Zanuck, Louis B. Mayer, Harry Cohn, Jack Warner and other Hollywood moguls. After reading their exploits, I had to conclude that, in his own ghetto fabulous way, Tyler Perry has brought the old studio system back to Hollywood.

Perry produces TV shows and adaptations of his stage work, hires numerous actors, writers and technicians of color, and has his own studio in Atlanta. That studio is on a lot more land than the 40 acres promised to my ancestors enslaved in Georgia when they were freed. Anyone who dares question my old school Hollywood studio comparison should take note: Perry's studio got a 100 episode, $200 million TV show contract from Colorizin' Ted Turner's TBS, the biggest TV contract given anyone, White, Black or polka-dotted. If Lew Wasserman were alive, he'd fist bump the man who would be Madea. For his producing prowess alone, Perry should be nicknamed Dave Negro Selznick.

Lest we forget Madea, Perry's alter-ego on both stage and film. A 6-foot-5 Black man dressed as a woman supports Dave Chapelle's argument that Hollywood has been de-sexing Black men the past 15 years by having them dress as asexual fat women. But Perry knows which side his bread is buttered on; Madea is his studio's Bette Davis, or perhaps its Rin Tin Tin. Laugh if you wanna, but remember: Rin Tin Tin saved the studio Bette Davis used to work for in her heyday. It's no secret that I can't stand Madea, but more on that later.

As biz-savvy as Perry is, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that he's got writing and directing skillset deficiencies, at least as they pertain to cinema and TV. For some, these issues came to a head in 2010 when he tackled Ntozake Shange's classic play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf. I had mixed feelings about that film, and have mixed feelings on Perry overall. I know you also have sort of a conflicted take on Perry, so let's explore all that. Let's talk about his bootleg, ass-out ghetto fabulous plays at the Beacon Theater, his critics, and his cinematic output. I am sick of the easy dismissals, and I confess I find some of Perry's flaws to be as fascinating as they are aggravating. To wit: Here's a blurb from an old E-mail I wrote you, courtesy of Big Media Vandalism's resident curmudgeon, my The Pondering Odie alter-ego, Octo Rooney:

Speaking of coonery: Does Madea qualify? I'm not going to hate on Tyler Perry because, as Shadow Henderson famously said AFTER the line of his I always quote: "if you grandiose muthafuckas played what the people want, then the people will come." Perry plays what the people want, and despite my aggravation with his hateration for Black people like myself, that is, light skinded successful people with edumacations, I cannot dismiss his old Hollywood studio mogul business sense. If his bootleg, ass-out, ghetto fabulous Beacon Theater gospel plays are indeed minstrelsy, what does it say about the Black folks who go see them? Bill Cosby said on that video clip that the images of Blacks depicted in the old days were the way Whites wanted to see Blacks; are Madea and the Browns the way their fans see themselves? Follow-up question: Will Perry destroy "For Colored Girls?"

Let's dig into these, and other instigations and interrogations.

Boone:

You were right to bring up what a lot of Perry's defenders point to as a case-closer, his titanic wealth. In an upwardly mobile black culture that reminds me of the white folks of the 1950's boom (minus any actual economic basis for it, just a desperate desire to move on up), box office receipts begin and end the conversation. The matter of whether any of these negro pageants approaches art is reserved for academics in kufi hats and tweed jackets with suede elbow patches the shape of Africa.

And for stray jokers like us.

We want a filmmaker as successful Perry to be making art on some level because we believe in the power of pop to change society. Seems like all the great pop world-changers leave us early: Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson, John Lennon, Tupac Shakur. Notice I mention only musicians here. There really are no popular filmmakers with that kind of prophet-like influence. While David Lynch has the spirituality to bring it off, he's often too "weird" to address a prosaic and distracted world, The Straight Story notwithstanding. Terence Malick is in touch with the eternal, but he's too lost in his schoolbooks to speak to plain folks. Steven Spielberg uses his pop power to make obvious statements about the world's great tragedies (the holocaust, terrorism and terror wars, slavery, etc.) but he'd serve us better by doing more of those quietly monumental things he does, such as casting a dark-skinned black girl as Jeff Goldblum's daughter in The Lost World (without making any fuss about it!) or the rearview mirror shot in A.I., the loveliest evocation of abandonment and loss in the history of cinema (more throat-tightening than any of the painful separations in Roots). Meanwhile, Michael Moore and Oliver Stone know how to harness liberal outrage and maybe snag a few sensitive swing voters, but they don't have the elemental, apolitical perspective to bring us all together.

The world needs a Michael Jackson among filmmakers, yes, but African-America needs such a filmmaker most urgently. Precious just ain't cutting it. I often quote the critic Stephanie Zacharek, who said David Lynch's camera is "as sensitive as a set of fingertips," and that kind of sensitivity (in storytelling, not just subject matter) is what black folks desperately need yesterday. Why else do so many black folks cling to Spielberg's The Color Purple? It was the last "black" film that, for all its cartoonish negritude at times, paid such close and delicate attention to the emotional weather of its characters. A lot of it has to do with the way Spielberg choreographs action in the space, his gift for misdirection and slow revelation. The Spielberg who made The Color Purple is like the John Ford who made How Green Was My Valley and the Orson Welles who made The Magnificent Ambersons. You can watch the whole movie with the sound down and not miss a thing. (Though I suggest turning it back up whenever Adolph Caeser shows up: "Muh-muh-maybe sweeep out da cabooose!")

Tyler Perry has that potential. Even in For Colored Girls, which is all over the goddamn place, he shows an ambition that towers over so many other black filmmakers at his level. Most of the directors who rose in the wake of the late-80's African-American New Wave became reliable craftsmen in the Ho'wood thrill machine but abandoned any hope of uplifting the race. Tyler Perry is on the job. He is setting himself up as black America's reigning black cinevangelist.

And that's the problem.

Just as I say that there's nothing wrong with Spielberg's filmmaking that going broke couldn't fix, there's nothing so terrible about Perry's work that leaving the church out of it and owning up to his own personal stake in his routinely female protagonists' hard luck stories wouldn't give a powerful kickstart. Perry's films feel trapped in various strange and dark closets. That's what gives them a weird tension, like those tightly corseted '50's melodramas that the smarty pants critics sometimes compare his movies to. When he owns up to this personal connection on the screen as candidly as he has on Oprah's couch, his box office might plummet but his artistic stock might start to rise.

Oh, and I don't buy Dave Chappelle's conspiracy theory about emasculating black men via drag characters. Dudes in dresses are a comedy staple across all cultures, since, like, forever. On the contrary, with the endless procession of badass mofos that began in the 1970s, I'm less concerned that popular culture has robbed black men of their masculinity than that it has denied their basic humanity.

Odie:

Don't ask me how this happened, but my TV found itself on BET the other day. I have reason to believe that my hand was possessed by some unseen evil force with a Weave(TM), and stopped working as soon as the remote flipped to that channel. On the screen was the beginning of Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married, Too? Since I hadn't seen Why Did I Get Married, One? I wasn't interested. But when I turned the channel, a woman who looked like Dawnn Lewis after she got cramps in I'm Gonna Git You Sucka appeared on my screen.

"Turn back! Turn this TV Baaaaack!!" said the possessed woman in a voice that sounded like Candyman.

So this may be the first time I've seen a sequel before I've seen the original. The obsessive-compulsive in me is still itching.

I'm glad I watched it, not because it's good (it ain't), but because it has a scene that foreshadows one in For Colored Girls. Janet Jackson, whom Perry must think is the quintessential ice bitch, humiliates her husband Malik Yoba at work. A gay dude jumps out of a gigantic cake she has delivered to the job, and Janet says "you wanna act like a bitch? Well HERE'S YOUR MAN!" It made me think of Jackson's role in For Colored Girls, where she finds out her husband is on the Down Low. I blamed Perry for that silly subplot, as it wasn't in For Colored Girls when I first saw it on stage, but it's really Shange's plot point. She added it to the updated For Colored Girls she released a few years ago.

What do you mean by Perry “owning up to his personal stake in his routinely female protagonists’ hard luck stories?” Do you mean that his films are all surface trauma? I can’t compare the common threads running through Perry’s work to, say, the concept of guilt that powers Scorsese or the macho bullshit that occasionally sinks Michael Mann. Perry’s themes seem less like auteur theory and more like turn-by-turn directions to the same location: Jesusville. Contrary to popular belief, his fan base of church folk starving for uplifting stories crosses racial lines. The same folks on line for Soul Surfer are on line for Madea’s Big Happy Family. They may not get some of the “Black humor,” but they are on the same Christian wavelength Perry’s films broadcast. For Christians, Pain and Redemption go together like rama-lama-lama and dingy-dee-dingy-dong. Perry’s films give them that, sometimes so much so that they become preposterous.

That repetition, or should I call it reinforcement, is comforting to Perry’s core audience. It’s taught to us in church, and the fundamentalist way it is taught, that whole “don’t question” mentality, is problematic from both an artistic perspective and a humanistic one. That latter issue is beyond the scope of this conversation, but the former is fair game. When I was a kid, church felt like a Tyler Perry stage play. There was some really good singing bracketed by pious repetition. Church always seemed like a re-run I was trapped in. They told me the same thing every week. The same woman got the Holy Spirit every single week. The same gossipy, hat wearing nosy bitches violated Matthew 7:1. The deacons passed around the collection plate and the preacher’s wardrobe got fancier and his garage got fuller. They gave us grape juice and matzoh and said it was de Lawd.

And we sang—which I loved and still love. Note that Perry’s movies edit out the musical numbers in much the same fashion as James L. Brooks butchered I’ll Do Anything. His moves seem to be yearning for those moments when people break out of their existences and belt out their emotions. Look at how fiery and interesting those monologues in For Colored Girls are. That they seem so out of place leads us back to Perry’s biggest problem: He needs some directorial schooling. If anyone could make this dramatic schizophrenia work, it’s Perry. He may not have the talent, but he has the balls. The man is audacious, and even at his most batshit crazy, you almost feel as if he COULD have made it work had he been more schooled in the visuals. Macy Gray’s whacked out abortionist is a WICKED set piece; Perry seems to be channeling the darkest heart of the Black church, the part that puts it so far right that it deserves its own show on Fox News. He also puts in his movies over-the-top yet almost brilliant curlicues of paranoia on the church’s homophobia. These WOULD be brilliant if he were more adept at execution.

Perhaps I misspoke (or miswrote, as the case may be here). Perry’s SECOND biggest problem is his lousy directing skills. His BIGGEST problem is his belief that he owes his audience. They elevated him to his position, and now he feels as if he owes them. Which, at one point, he DID owe them. But when can he sign this check “Paid in Full” so he can move on? When does Shirley Caesar let him off the hook with a well-timed verse of “No Charge?” He’s made 10 movies; isn’t that enough? He’s like the M.C. Hammer of Black filmmakers, dragging along old ‘hood chums because he feels he owes them; meanwhile, they are bankrupting his creativity.

The “Dave Negro Selznick” in Perry needs to branch out. With his money and power, he can do something useful like make another Sounder, or resurrect Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins series. I have some hope for the latter, courtesy of Perry taking an acting role in the next Alex Cross movie. I am actually looking forward to seeing if Perry truly can act, and if he, like many actors-turned-directors, will learn from watching a more experienced director direct him. What do you think?

Next time, I’ll talk about why I believe Perry could direct a love story as old-fashioned and Afrocentric as Claudine AND pull off something on the emotional level of Spielberg’s The Color Purple. And I’ve always said I wanted to see Spike Lee’s Bring In Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk, but I wonder if I’d rather see Tyler Perry’s version.

Boone:

Janet Jackson (in the Married films and For Colored Girls) and Taraji P. Henson (in I Can Do Bad All By Myself) have been really powerful muses for Perry. Their scenes of emotional devastation and transformation are what I mean by his "personal stake" in the films. His abused and embittered female protagonists are, in effect, him. How can I presume so much? Well, he's copped to having been molested and beaten as a child. Everyone senses something effeminate and eccentric about his persona. (Gossips take this speculation a lot further, but we won't.) In a great New Yorker article on Perry, Hitlon Als cites an anecdote the director told about a strange man on the block he grew up on. Als says Perry' needs to include more of these troublesome eccentrics in his work.

Actually, he does put offbeat characters in his films but holds them at arms length until they get a haircut, take a bath, turn to Jesus, etc. In I Can Do Bad All By Myself, we have a grubby foreigner who we and Taraji are led to suspect is a child molester. Before Taraji and the Black Audience can accept him, he must cut off that bushy beard (to reveal a telegenic latin stud) and prove himself manly and virtuous by standing up to the real child molester, Taraji's surly, no-account boyfriend. Perry Plot points like these remind me of Terry Gilliam's critique of E.T.: If it's about Elliot learning what it means to love, why make the creature so cute? Why not make him ugly and smelly and have Elliot learn to love that? (For the record, I love me some E.T., but I'll be damned if Gilliam don't got a point there!)

It's Perry's vision of Black Correctness, not the supposed "coonery" Spike Lee is complaining about, that gives me shortness of breath. And Spike has often been just as guilty of it; his cynical, secular eye just does a better job of camouflaging it with wild sex scenes and Scorsese bravura. These filmmakers cry about perceptions of us as monolithic, yet they always reach for stock Ebony/Jet/70's album cover images of black life. Your best friend Armond White has written of the "prison of white imagination" but for the past 20 years we've been doing hard time in the prison of the black church's imagination. The black church so often rides shotgun with the most mainstream, corporate, complacent positions. You put it brilliantly when you said, "Perry seems to be channeling the darkest heart of the Black church, the part that puts it so far right that it deserves its own show on Fox News."

If Roger Ailes reads your last entry, expect to see one of those pastors who supported George W. back in the days get his get his or her own Hour of Power on Fox. Damn you.

Yes, I am just as baffled as you are about the lack of black musicals in an age when the hard-put working class audience out there is all but crying out for escapism that doesn't always weigh a ton.

Odie:

Funny you should mention troublesome eccentrics. I was watching Jo Jo Dancer today, and it reminded me of the characters Richard Pryor portrayed in his stand-up. People like Mudbone and the wino are gloriously weird people, fascinating for not only their thought processes but also because, as odd as they were, we were familiar with them. Who didn't have a Mudbone or a wino in their 'hood? And Pryor is not judgemental, opting to merely present his characters and let us respond to, or recoil from, their eccentricities. The examples of Perry's weirdos you cite are good ones, but you sense the man can't commit to just letting somebody be fantastically fucked up. Or maybe he can...Hold that thought for a moment.

Flaubert supposedly said "Madame Bovary c'est moi." Tyler Perry identifies with those downtrodden, abused women in his movies, and it has nothing to do with sexual preference. It's completely predicated on his being raised by women, and finding strength and comfort in their struggle. He makes their trials his own because, as you noted, he has copped to being molested and abused. You would think women--and Black women in particular--would find that noble, but some of the sistahs do not. They're enslaved to a different kind of image of what Black men should be, and with whom they should identify. Any perceived weakness makes misguided sistahs like Jacque Reid embrace their inner Benita Buttrell. Unfortunately, Perry is just as guilty of this macho mindset in most of his movies, which is simultaneously odd and appropriate. After all, he's identifying with these women.

"It's Perry's vision of Black Correctness, not the supposed "coonery" Spike Lee is complaining about, that gives me shortness of breath."

Ah yes, the revered Black Correctness, or as they Ebonically put it, "Keepin' it Real." Perry suffers that affliction, as does his nemesis, Spike Lee. Let's really piss Shelton off, shall we? I can draw a straight line from Perry's stage plays/movies to Spike Lee's School Daze. As I wrote during BHM 2011, School Daze is a glorious hot mess. It is full of Perry's audaciousness, but tethered by Lee's directorial skill and Ernest Dickerson's glorious cin-tog. In Daze, Lee is speaking directly and solely to Black folks--probably for the last time in Lee's career--and like Perry, his audience is a specific set of Folks. I didn't go to a historically Black college, but I knew enough of them to follow even if I couldn't appreciate it fully.

Perry and Lee also share the desire to mock and reconstruct bougie Negroes. You can be a success, but it will cost you your nappy soul if you don't have God in a Perry film, or a dark-skinned mate in some of Lee's work. Lee's corrective--that thing designed to set you on the right path--is, of course, Spike Lee the director. Perry's corrective is usually his alter ego, the gun-totin', kid-slappin' Madea.

I really think Madea scares "the enlightened Negro" because she reminds them of that which they have "escaped." She's that reminder that, no matter how far you get in the majority's world, you still have dark colored clothing in your closet. Like a chitlin' circuit comedian, Madea is pure Black id. She is not polite, rarely goes to church, smokes, and reminds every single Black person of somebody they know. Madea tries my last nerve, just like the family members she reminds me of, and that's why I'm not a big fan. And after seeing Madea's Big Happy Family on bootleg today, I think I finally get why Madea is so important to Perry, and why she might be harder to give up than Whitney's crack:

Tyler Perry is the victimized character in his films, and Madea is his personal superhero.

She is what the therapist I go to for my own childhood traumas refers to as "a protector identity." In portraying this protector, Perry is saving himself. Surely, God will deliver Perry's characters, but He occasionally has avenging angels.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Perry's first movie, Diary of a Mad Black Woman. You forgot to mention BMV fave Kimberly Elise as an actress whom Perry works through. Elise is horribly mistreated by her husband, and Madea shows up with a chainsaw for some Waiting to Exhale style retribution. Madea shows up in Big Happy Family to slap the everlasting gobstopper shit out of anybody who disrespects her auth-or-itay, including the bad ass kids and ungrateful spawn of suffering Loretta Devine. I still think Madea works far better onstage than onscreen, but here's one aspect nobody mentions about her: She is consistently the bad cop of Perry's movies. She is unchanging, full of eccentricities, and Perry refuses to change her.

To close out my part of this discussion, I should mention that Perry's actresses, from experienced vets like Kathy Bates, Elise and Alfre Woodard, to newbies like Tessa Thompson, trust their director with their acting lives. He gets them to do things, and to go to places, that require incredible trust. Sometimes his lack of skills betrays them; other times he is spectacularly accurate. Matt Seitz points this out in his defense of Perry over at Salon:

"...in film after film, he gathers together some of the greatest African-American actresses in America -- actresses who are lucky to get one or two scenes in a film with a predominantly white cast -- in leading roles that let them chase dreams, make mistakes, fall in love, have their hearts broken, flirt, seduce, manipulate, preen, pout, rail against injustice, and endure and transcend Old Testament-level suffering. And they reward Perry with performances so heartfelt, and often so accomplished, that they make all of his films worth seeing no matter what you think of him as a director. Consider Jackson, who made no particular impression as the title character in her debut film "Poetic Justice," but has been knocking performances out of the park for Perry. She outdoes herself here...Perry gets at the mix of masculine hyper-competitiveness and feminine vulnerability that has always defined Jackson, and links it to the wily, lonely coldness often captured in Wyman and Crawford performances, a directorial gambit of tremendous perceptiveness."

You get the last word, my brother, but before you do:

Two things:

1. Jesus is going to light your ass on fire for calling Armond my "best friend."

2. Don't blame my prior post if Rev. Jeremiah Wright replaces Glenn Beck on Fox News. You'll see an ad for him on the bus stop, lookin' like this:

Boone:

Lord, I think Seitz has the last word on this one. His defense of Perry and, more importantly, Perry's actresses, reminds me of the first kid on the playground to stand up to the bully (critical consensus). I think a lot of people are afraid to admit to Perry's strengths, or even to admit to finding him funny. (I mean "haha" funny.) In terms of great female performances, The Family That Preys might be the ultimate Perry women's picture. Even Sanaa Lathan, saddled with a character who goes from cold-hearted and colorstruck to chastened and mortified in a few short steps, dazzles in that flick. (She also looks distressingly fine every step of the way. Perry and cinematographer Toyomichi Kurita render her the breathtaking American equivalent of Penelope Cruz as seen through Almodovar's lens.)

For the record, I've always liked Madea and thought she was the second funniest character in Perry's stable, after the mustad-yellow-pants-wearing Mr. Brown. What?

(Also for the record, folks, Odie has never met Armond White, and if they ever do meet, it will be trouble.)

Anyway, you have made many brilliant observations in this convo, but I have to praise this one in particular:

"Tyler Perry identifies with those downtrodden, abused women in his movies, and it has nothing to do with sexual preference. It's completely predicated on his being raised by women, and finding strength and comfort in their struggle. He makes their trials his own because, as you noted, he has copped to being molested and abused. You would think women--and Black women in particular--would find that noble, but some of the sistahs do not. They're enslaved to a different kind of image of what Black men should be, and with whom they should identify. Any perceived weakness makes misguided sistahs like Jacque Reid embrace their inner Benita Butrell. Unfortunately, Perry is just as guilty of this macho mindset in most of his movies, which is simultaneously odd and appropriate. After all, he's identifying with these women."

Absolutely on the money. It's a problem in the culture at large as well, one that I deal with personally and observe all the time. Behavior that would be considered sensitive and mature in a white man viewed as weak/nerdy by a certain segment of the audience. (I've had some horrible first-and-last dates with a certain segment of that segment.) To be fair to Perry, he does allow for quite a few average, humble nice guys among his male leads. And when they get to vent at their bitchy wives or girlfriends, I drop my popcorn in the rush to deliver a standing-o. Which reminds me of the classic rejoinder to Perry's sistahs-in-peril tropes, Diary of a Tired Black Man.

You said:

"Perry and Lee also share the desire to mock and reconstruct bougie Negroes. You can be a success, but it will cost you your nappy soul if you don't have God in a Perry film, or a dark-skinned mate in some of Lee's work."

This is why they would make a great "Grindhouse"-like double bill. They should swap scripts. Lee would be forced to direct a dark-skinned "villain"; Perry a light-skinned one. Perry would--

You know, I just bored myself even imagining that scenario. The truth is that neither Spike Lee nor Tyler Perry are as limber or nimble or subtle or generous an auteur as we (you, me and every negro we know) really needs right now. Spike Lee has admitted that, while he's a pioneer among black filmmakers, he is not the cinema equivalent of the Jazz greats. He implied that the Parkers and Coltranes of African-American directors haven't yet arrived. I disagree. They're out there, just under-funded like Charles Burnett or M.I.A., like Wendell B. Harris. But what I really think we need is a Michael Jackson or Stevie Wonder among black filmmakers. Spike may affect their world consciousness and Perry may do their kind of blockbuster business, but there is yet no black Steven Spielberg-- an ambassador of love with the virtuoso classical filmmaking chops to give his simple message true force. "Thank God," some would say, but I say, "God willing, one day." We could also use a David Lynch or Apichatpong Weerasethakul (which is to say, extending the Jazz metaphor, a Sun Ra, Rahsaan Roland Kirk or Miles Davis), somebody who's willing to go deep into the sub-levels of our dreams and delusions without fear of embarrassment or absurdity.

Nothing would make me happier than to see a great success like Perry become that kind of filmmaker. But winning the lotto and having Sanaa Latham attend to me like one of the Prince of Zamunda's Royal Bathers would also make me happy, know what I mean?

Black History Mumf 2011

2011-02-01T03:42:00.001-05:00

As I have done for the past four years, I've gone over to Big Media Vandalism to do my Black History Mumf series. Occasionally, I'll show up here with an original piece, but for the most part, I'll just be cross-promoting it here.

Here's today's piece, the first piece of the Month, I mean Mumf:

Where I Was 25 Years Ago Today

2011-01-28T14:59:00.000-05:00

By Odienator

It’s funny the selective things you remember when you take stock of recalled mental inventory, and how you can re-stitch them into your current narrative. January 28th, 1986 began as any other day in my senior year of high school. I was 15 and still coping with the half-blindness I’d acquired 9 months prior. Like most boys, I had dreams of being an astronaut, or at the very least, being able to fly a plane. Those dreams went the way of my self-confidence and self-esteem when I lost my eye. The only plus that came from my disfigurement was that my gym teacher would never get another opportunity to berate me in front of the class: I got a doctor’s note to sit out gym my senior year.

My senior year curriculum was an eerily prescient harbinger of my life and career to come: I had a writing class and a computer class, the latter I took for college credit. I also had a psychology class, which I enjoyed so much that I started college as a psych major. This class was an elective taught by Mr. R., the first and last class I took with him (though I saw him every day for three years in homeroom). Mr. R. liked to make jokes and tell us stories that, in hindsight, probably weren’t very politically correct. Of course, having a rebellious edge is the best way to get through to teenagers, so we really enjoyed Mr. R. and his classes.

One thing I remember him joking about was the latest NASA mention. “There’s a teacher on it,” he said, “so it’ll probably blow up.” Mr. R. was always making jokes about teachers, and coming from a family of teachers, I’d pretty much heard them all already. He’d tell us he could cash his check on the bus, something my cousin says today. Folks in my family also joked that the space shuttle might explode; their reason was because a Black person was on it. Whenever the shuttle mission would come up, Mr. R. would always casually mention that teacher, and how teachers were just not lucky.

Intro to Psych was 5th period in my schedule--It came right after my 4th period lunch. Senior year was the first time I chose to stay in the school cafeteria during lunch; prior to that, I’d always gone to my aunt’s house to eat the sandwiches I dropped into her fridge before school. I do not recall if I sat in the caf that day, but I do know I did not go anywhere near a TV. I probably accompanied some friends to one of the places they bought lunch, either the “Post Office Store,” so christened because it was across the street from the post office, or “Hold the Roach,” named for reasons you probably don’t want to know.

If memory serves, 5th period started something like 12:19 PM. Had I gone to my aunt’s, I would have known that, during my lunch period, the space shuttle Challenger had disintegrated during launch. All seven astronauts: Michael J. Smith, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik, and Mr. R.’s fellow teacher, Christa McAuliffe died at 11:38 AM.

When class started, Mr. R. began by saying solemnly “the Challenger blew up.” We thought he was kidding. How many times had he predicted it would? “No, I’m serious,” he said. “It blew up.”

There’s a big hole in my memory here. I don’t remember the rest of the school day, nor my own nor my fellow students’ reactions. My next recollection is what happened when I got home. My Mom said “a terrible tragedy happened today.” On the TV was the constant replaying of said tragedy. It got played over and over and over, like my generation’s Zapruder film equivalent. I was watching actual death on my TV. Since then, I have seen people die 10 feet away from where I stood, yet I will always remember just how traumatized I was by that footage. I don’t even think I’d seen the Zapruder film at this time, so this was a first for me.

That Mr. R. and my family had “predicted” this, even in jest, freaked me out to no end. It changed the way I wrote and spoke. I have wished violence on lots of people, both in print and in person, yet I’ve never wished something that could feasibly happen. I’d wish that the Moon would fall on the person, or that thing from Alien would bust out of their asses, or, in the case of the author of Twilight in my last post, the offending person would be shot out of a cannon. I can never bring myself to say to someone “I hope you die,” no matter how angry I get. This has nothing to do with my upbringing, so I have to attribute this in some way to my reaction to the Challenger tragedy.

I purposely avoided putting any pictures or links in this piece. You can find all that information on your own. I mean no disrespect—it’s just too much for me to relive at the moment. Still, I am reminded often. My high school is now named after Ronald McNair, and in 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia also tragically disintegrated. In 1999, I worked in Nacogdoches, Texas, where pieces of the Columbia were found, so I saw people I’d met on TV talking about what was found in their front yards. All I could do was turn off the TV and weep, something I am sure I will also do at some point today.

A Ploy To Get Laid Gone Awry

2011-01-13T00:56:00.000-05:00

By Odienator

Blogger's Note: This was written in November, 2009, the day a radio station sponsored screening of Twilght: New Moon unspooled at a theater I used to frequent when I lived in Ohio. An old classmate of mine mentioned that she'd suffered through it on DVD recently, which made me think of this story. Two things you should know about this story:

1. It has never seen the light of day, outside of the original E-mail it appeared in and

2. Normally, the tales of my adventures you will read here are 100% true. This one has a little bit of poetic license in it. I'll let you figure out where that is, but I must warn you: It is NOT where you think it is.

Enjoy!

I got cussed out today by a woman.

I know. I know. "What else is new, Odie? When do you not get cussed out by a woman?" Today's cuss-out is brought to you by Stephenie Meyer, the woman who proves that Black folks aren't the only race of people who get way too creative with the spellings of regular names. Ms. Meyer is also the writer of the Twilight series, whose second installment opened in theaters at 9 PM tonight. I was at a bar next to one of the theaters out here. I noticed the line for the cinema spiraled around the parking lot and was full of women of all ages. Some of them were dressed as Bella, the main character played by Kristen Stewart. I didn't see one man on the line.

"What's all this?" asked a guy sitting near me. "The theater has an early screening of the Twilight movie," said the bartender. A very attractive woman sitting next to me said "oh God, I can't wait to see that! I LOVE Edward!" Responding to the face I made, the woman said "I take it that you don't like Twilight?"

"It's not for me," I said."Well, if you read the books," the woman told me, "you'd see how pure and wonderful this love story is." She started to swoon. "Edward and Bella! I wish I had that kind of love!"

I'm being punked, I thought. Where is Ashton Kutcher?

I told her "I'll have you know that I read Twilight." She looked surprised, then pleased. Her pleasure was short-lived. "It was nauseating," I began. "The author should be shot out of a cannon. She single-handedly has suggested an entire generation of women should behave like obsessive wenches who can't live without a man. That Bella was straight up Fatal Attraction, pining for Edward to the point where I wanted to scream 'BITCH BUY A DILDO, DAMN!'"

The woman looked stunned, as if I'd slapped her in the face with a copy of Breaking Dawn. Her stunned expression gave way to a look I've seen before, pure Hell Hath No Fury Like A Woman Scorned rage. She started breathing heavily, as if she were about to turn into the Hulk. "How dare you say that about EDWARRRRD?!!" Her voice was low and guttural. "He LOVED Bella! Fuck you, you bastard!!!" She stormed away from the bar and sat at one of the empty tables. She glared at me, shaking as she drank her cocktail.

The bartender shook his head and went back to cleaning his beer glasses. The other guy at the bar looked at me as if asking "what just happened?" I shrugged.

Sitting here at home later this evening, I had an epiphany. "Odie, you JACKASS!" yelled my epiphany. "The theater is full of overheating women swooning for Edward. Didn't you see how that woman reacted? If you had only said you loved Edward too, that you wanted to give the kind of love Edward gives, you would be nailing that woman right now! Your penis hates you."

"I hate you," said a voice behind my zipper.

Shit, I thought. I gotta get back in good with the equipment. I knew what I had to do.

I went to Target.

After my brief shopping shopping excursion, I showed up at the theater. Looking at my watch, I calculated that the New Moon screening would end in 15 minutes. I adjusted my newly bought attire in my car mirror and waited. "Don't mess this up, Odie!" I said to myself.

As women started pouring out of the theater, I got out of my car and started walking toward the theater doors. As I got closer, I could see some of the women had been crying. And not just the tweeners, but the 20-somethings as well. I approached one of the 20-somethings dressed like Kristen Stewart and said the only line I remember from the book. "Bella, I don't have the strength to stay away from you."

She looked at me, not sure what to do. She was dressed like Bella...

...and I was dressed like Edward.

I had the Halloween clearance rack vampire cape I got from Target on, plus some fake teeth I'd also retrieved from the clearance table. "Be mine, Bella," I said, sounding like Bela Lugosi's brother from Paterson, New Jersey.

It wasn't working. She was in love with Edward, a pasty, anorexic looking White boy, not Blacula! She started to back away slowly.

Suddenly, I remembered--the vampires SPARKLE in the book. Immediately, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the big tube of glitter I bought. "Sparkle sparkle sparkle!" I said as I threw a huge handful of glitter in the air.

"My eyes!!" Bella yelled.

"My ass!" I yelled when I saw the police officer briskly walking over to where I was. My fake Bella chose this opportunity to make her escape. "Edward wouldn't do that," I swore I heard her say.

"You need to go home, Edward," said the cop.

I looked at him incredulously. He thought I was delusional. "Officer, I don't think I'm Edward," I said. "This was a ploy to get laid gone awry."

"I understand, Edward," he said. "Go home."

"My name's not Edward! It's O--"

Common Sense held my tongue. "You're gonna tell him your name, asshole?!!" snapped Common Sense. "Why not just jump on his police car?!"

"Edward going home," I said to the cop. "Good," he said.

"I hate you," said a voice behind my zipper.

"I hate you, too." said I.

Hollywood's January Jones

2011-01-07T11:36:00.001-05:00

by Odienator

This January is the dumping ground for all the movies Hollywood was ashamed it made in 2010. I suppose the conventional wisdom is that audiences, still flying high from the holidays, will be more forgiving when fed leftovers. With awards season in full swing, Hollywood focuses on Oscar jockeying while leaving no one to mind the store. Whenever Oscar is mentioned in regard to a January movie, it usually sounds like this:

"Oscar winner Nicolas Cage, star of The Wicker Man, kicks ass as Behmen in the January release, Season of The Witch. Based on the hit song by Donovan and the 1983 release, Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Nine more months 'til Halloween, Silver Shamrock!"

or

"Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow teams up with Sandra Bullock's husband from The Blind Side in Country Strong. Paltrow reminds us that, not only can she sing, but she can be more auto-tuned than T-Pain! See Gwyneth prove that all country singers are alkies! You've seen her mama in Little Fockers, now see her in Country Strong!"

I have this superstition that judges my movie year by the first movie I saw in January (it has to be a new release). If I liked the movie, my year would be filled with bad cinema. If I disliked the movie, then it would be a good year. This sounds like I'm stacking the deck--January is filled with bad moviemaking--until you factor in my love of trashy movies (henceforth known as trash movie humping). You never know what I'm going to enjoy, and therein lies the element of surprise. Sometimes the studios surprise too, by dumping what seems like a major hit into the scheduling slums of the saddest cinematic season. Witness The Green Hornet, which I'm saving for my first official movie of 2011. Honestly, I think I'll hate it.

As Fats Waller used to say: One never knows, do one?

Get To Know Your Odienator

2011-01-06T23:41:00.006-05:00

By Odienator

Hell has frozen over! And not just from this blog’s punny title.

After years of resistance, I have finally decided to toss my hat into the ring of blog ownership. This may come as a surprise, as I’ve been very vocal about my avoidance. For a computer programmer, I am shockingly analog about many things. In the time I’ve had a twitter feed, I have not sent one single tweet nor have I followed anyone who has. (Maybe that'll change.) Grad school was the only reason I got a Facebook page, and while it’s been helpful in reconnecting with high school classmates, I rarely use it as a social device. I have been on Facebook since 2005, and I have 51 friends. People have attempted to friend me, but in the past two years I’ve said no more times than the Republican Party. Pictures of me—at least ones that I have put out—are few and far between on the Internet. Outside of E-mail, which I love, I don’t have much use for computer mediated communication. If you sat on a machine writing programming code all day, and your vision sucked as mine does, you probably wouldn’t either.

Until now, I have been content to appear at other venues in the blogosphere, gracious places like Slant Magazine’s House Next Door and my second home, Big Media Vandalism. This new venture saves my Big Media Vandalism partner in crime, Steven Boone, from waking up in an alley with a big ass Pete Puma knot on his head, the victim of blog-jacking. Said nefarious plot was jettisoned early in its planning stages because I’d rather guilt Boone into doing more on his blog than robbing it from him altogether. Still, despite the Odienator blog, the fourth year of the Black History Mumf series will begin January 31, 2011 at Big Media Vandalism. I may consider doing BHM Behind the Scenes posts here, as an extra feature.

In fact, I shall continue appearing at any blog I currently do, for as long as they will have me. So the big question, as Pia Zadora famously scripted in The Lonely Lady, is “Why?! Why?!!!” Why am I doing this when I am happy to continue being a blog whore offering his services to whomever will be my john? The short answer is that every year since 2004, I have committed to doing something that takes me out of my comfort zone. This year, it’s running a blog. Granted, I code my own pieces at BMV, but outside of February, I don’t have to be consistent. Here, I shall try to post often, which means more time on the computer AND that I eventually have to do something to make this site look presentable. I’m a back-end programmer who hates web design, so that, along with the extra computer time, makes me uncomfortable. But it was either this or go back to stripping. Considering the physical shape I am currently in, this blog was the right call. Next year, however, don’t be surprised if I show up at your bachelorette party. Make it rain $10’s and $20’s only, please.

I shall not be presumptuous and assume you know who I am and what to expect from me. This blog will primarily feature articles on film and the occasional rant about current events. Since I am on the road 70% of the year, and I travel all over the world, I’ll also chime in with travelogues and adventures in whatever city I am programming. This last one may sound boring—there are no dirty jokes about traveling programmers for a reason—but trust me, I can never have a normal experience. For example, I was once bitten in an Irish pub by a drunk guy dressed in a Dan Marino football outfit. Another time, I got cussed out by an angry hooker who looked like Fran Drescher in Amsterdam. See? If it’s messed up and absurd, I guarantee you it will find me.

Those familiar with my writing will know what they are in for here; for the uninitiated, consider this fair warning: I am not politically correct. I use profanity AND Ebonics, both on purpose. I talk about sex, religion, race and politics, none of which are polite topics. No one and nothing is safe nor sacred here, least of all me. If I can talk shit about myself, and I do quite often, nothing else is exempt. Most importantly, while I love debate, if all you have to bring to the table is your being offended, don’t come into my dining room.

Outside of that issue of programmers hating people, the biggest reason I never wanted a blog is because I’ve read the comments sections on other blogs. People are really fucking stewpit when they hide behind anonymous postings. (By the way, the IT technologist in me tells you you’re not as anonymous as you think, but I digress.) I’ve turned on comment moderation, and I won’t put up with abusiveness toward others nor any bullshit that looks like “U R STOOPID. GO BACK 2 THE GHETTO.” If you want to be treated like an adult, act like one.

Regarding the reviews and film pieces that will appear, I try to judge every movie on its own merits, even if it’s in a genre for which I have little tolerance. Cinema snobbery is not my strong suit, so I am not against chick flicks, cartoons, or comedies. I’m not going to piss on mainstream movies, nor am I going to blow indie directors just to make you feel I have credentials. Your opinion may be valuable to you, but no matter what you think of me, my ass will still be Black tomorrow. In other words, the world will continue to spin.

While I will watch just about anything, I am a huge fan of classic movies, film noir, Billy Wilder, Barbara Stanwyck, and of course, trash. I love trash like Oscar the Grouch does. I used to run the Shameful Movies of Odie’s Past film festival, for Pete’s sake.

Politically, I am a liberal, but I’m also not blind (I’m only half-blind), so I’m willing to give credit where it is due no matter who does it. I am sure this will get me in trouble on both sides of the aisle, though on one side more than the other because I love messing with people whose beliefs are occasionally as absurd as my travel adventures tend to be.

Religiously, despite being the son of a Baptist minister, I am a very lapsed Baptist who doesn’t give a damn about saving your soul (or even mine, for that matter. Hell is going to be DA BOMB!).

Party. Party. Par-tay!!

I’ve no use for organized religion, but I do believe there’s some form of higher power, and that higher power likes fucking with me. I don’t believe that higher power hates gay people, so if that’s your schtick, keep on walking. If you plan to convince me that you can save my soul by forcing me to believe what you do, gets ta steppin’. If you’re going to tell me I’m burning in Hell, you won’t get any arguments here, but you still gotta go.

Gee, Odie, there’s nobody left to read this blog.

In all seriousness, welcome to the party, and I hope to see you around and interact intelligently with you.