The Inner Lives of Famous Faces
The Prowler (1951)
directed by Joseph Losey
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
seen on the screen at The Egyptian Theatre
On the one hand, The Prowler is exactly what James Ellroy says it is, which is what got us into the theater in the first place. "Suffocating, ugly passion" does wonders at the box office, but I remember less about the escalating insanity that compels the principal players towards a ghost town in the desert (the landscape of atom bombs) than the early late-night scenes where the unfortunate object of Van Heflin's affection waits by the radio alone. So, probably, does Ellroy, and so does everyone. They're lush and lonely scenes. Evelyn Keyes' husband is a DJ, and each night he serenades her in his own sonorous, selfish way. When he goes off the air, she turns off the stereo and waits for him.
Their quiet Los Angeles neighborhood, the oddity of empty lots, and the quick transition from a comforting voice to silence renders the possibility that someone outside is looking in both terrible and comforting. There's a hall of fame in movies strictly for the night air in California, from The Big Sleep to Fallen Angel to this. The parallel on both ends - the psychotic and narcotic qualities to The Prowler that wash the senses clean - to the Dream Factory then and now means you never really lose Old Hollywood. One has to embrace the fact that John Huston financed this movie for Keyes even though he'd already divorced her: rapturous, rotted-heart contradictions.
Observe and Report (2009)
directed by Jody Hill
rating: 1 out of 5 cravats
seen on the screen at Grauman's Chinese Theatre
In March, I hadn't heard of Jody Hill. After Eastbound & Down I would follow him anywhere, and an afternoon show at a nearly empty Chinese Theatre seemed like an easy enough campaign on paper. There's no point in mincing words. I didn't like Observe and Report. It's mean-spirited, confused, and cruel. But I'm willing to try and give Hill the benefit of the doubt.
When David Gordon Green went to Hollywood, Hill - his classmate - stayed behind. For ten years, he went to the movies in North Carolina and watched whatever it was that Ben Stiller and Will Ferrell starred in. "These are funny," Hill would think, but they could be funnier, and more violent, with lots more swearing. When Knocked Up came out, I like to think that Hill, like me, couldn't move past that most ridiculous of premises - the beauty and the slob - and that, very possibly, he turned to Danny McBride or Ben Best and said, "That would never happen in real life." In real life, it wouldn't be funny if Seth Rogen got Katherine Heigel drunk and then had sex with her, because she'd need to have a lot to drink to do it, and Knocked Up - which never mentions the word "abortion" - never mentions the word "rape" either.
Flush from the success of The Foot Fist Way (apparently Eastbound & Down got underway after O & R), Hill gets to make his Hollywood movie. He casts Seth Rogen (probably because he has to, but it fits), and all the things Hill's been thinking about for ten years become manifest in one very horrible moment: a rape scene. He wants his comedy to be different, he thinks - he throws around Taxi Driver in interviews - but when the moment comes, he pulls his punch. It would be worse if Anna Farris, passed out on her bed with vomit on the pillow, said nothing; what she says doesn't change anything, but it lessens the blow of what we've just realized we're watching. I made it through the rest of the movie this way, when I might have walked out instead.
But even if I'm right - if a nod is as good as a wink to blind Judd Apatow - I can still feel a little sick just having written those last two paragraphs. I don't have to like Observe and Report, and I don't.
directed by Joseph Losey
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
seen on the screen at The Egyptian Theatre
On the one hand, The Prowler is exactly what James Ellroy says it is, which is what got us into the theater in the first place. "Suffocating, ugly passion" does wonders at the box office, but I remember less about the escalating insanity that compels the principal players towards a ghost town in the desert (the landscape of atom bombs) than the early late-night scenes where the unfortunate object of Van Heflin's affection waits by the radio alone. So, probably, does Ellroy, and so does everyone. They're lush and lonely scenes. Evelyn Keyes' husband is a DJ, and each night he serenades her in his own sonorous, selfish way. When he goes off the air, she turns off the stereo and waits for him.
Their quiet Los Angeles neighborhood, the oddity of empty lots, and the quick transition from a comforting voice to silence renders the possibility that someone outside is looking in both terrible and comforting. There's a hall of fame in movies strictly for the night air in California, from The Big Sleep to Fallen Angel to this. The parallel on both ends - the psychotic and narcotic qualities to The Prowler that wash the senses clean - to the Dream Factory then and now means you never really lose Old Hollywood. One has to embrace the fact that John Huston financed this movie for Keyes even though he'd already divorced her: rapturous, rotted-heart contradictions.
Observe and Report (2009)
directed by Jody Hill
rating: 1 out of 5 cravats
seen on the screen at Grauman's Chinese Theatre
In March, I hadn't heard of Jody Hill. After Eastbound & Down I would follow him anywhere, and an afternoon show at a nearly empty Chinese Theatre seemed like an easy enough campaign on paper. There's no point in mincing words. I didn't like Observe and Report. It's mean-spirited, confused, and cruel. But I'm willing to try and give Hill the benefit of the doubt.
When David Gordon Green went to Hollywood, Hill - his classmate - stayed behind. For ten years, he went to the movies in North Carolina and watched whatever it was that Ben Stiller and Will Ferrell starred in. "These are funny," Hill would think, but they could be funnier, and more violent, with lots more swearing. When Knocked Up came out, I like to think that Hill, like me, couldn't move past that most ridiculous of premises - the beauty and the slob - and that, very possibly, he turned to Danny McBride or Ben Best and said, "That would never happen in real life." In real life, it wouldn't be funny if Seth Rogen got Katherine Heigel drunk and then had sex with her, because she'd need to have a lot to drink to do it, and Knocked Up - which never mentions the word "abortion" - never mentions the word "rape" either.
Flush from the success of The Foot Fist Way (apparently Eastbound & Down got underway after O & R), Hill gets to make his Hollywood movie. He casts Seth Rogen (probably because he has to, but it fits), and all the things Hill's been thinking about for ten years become manifest in one very horrible moment: a rape scene. He wants his comedy to be different, he thinks - he throws around Taxi Driver in interviews - but when the moment comes, he pulls his punch. It would be worse if Anna Farris, passed out on her bed with vomit on the pillow, said nothing; what she says doesn't change anything, but it lessens the blow of what we've just realized we're watching. I made it through the rest of the movie this way, when I might have walked out instead.
But even if I'm right - if a nod is as good as a wink to blind Judd Apatow - I can still feel a little sick just having written those last two paragraphs. I don't have to like Observe and Report, and I don't.
posted by NPK at 11:57 PM
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