October 12, 2021

Thinking about how it's still tempting, from time to time, to throw a toddler tantrum in Target, by which I mean just emotionally throwing myself on the floor and making people deal with me. Refusing to walk anymore, to go to work, to try to keep myself stable and happy, to feel good about things. I want to let things absolutely go to hell. To be a terrible flaming spectacle. Unfortunately and fortunately, the destructive passion doesn't last long enough to forever stave off its after effects: consequences, embarrassment, shame,  the bewildering sensation of wonder what I had been so worked up about. Didn't I know it was all going to be fine? 

It's tempting to still want a parent/child relationship. A person in my life to be my mother, like my mother was when I was a baby: totally in charge of me, responsible for me, consumed by me. Obviously, no one's actually going to do this for me, and it would be unhealthy (and ridiculous) if they did. My own mother loves me and I'm sure thinks about me some of the time, but I am far from her daily most pressing concern. She's got projects to do. She's moved on. 

Oh boy. 

Mlog Time! 

TITANE

2021

Directed by: Julia Ducournau

Written by: Julia Ducournau

Watched: 10/7/21

Alexia as a child doesn’t get along with her father. She hums to the sound of the car while he drives and listens to music. He turns up the volume to drown her out. She gets louder and then starts kicking the back of his seat. When she unbuckles her seatbelt and starts climbing around, she causes a car crash. She has to get a titanium plate in her skull. As an adult, she dances at car shows and is a serial killer. She kills people who are attracted to her and meet up for sex or romance. She has a tattoo between her breasts that says “Love is a dog from hell.” She locks her parents in their room and sets the house on fire. On the run, she disguises her appearance – breaking her nose and cutting her hair, wearing an oversized sweatshirt so she looks like a boy. She’s picked up at the train station by a man who’s been missing his son since he was little. The man says he recognizes Alexia as his son. Oh! I forgot. Alexia has sex with a car and is now pregnant. Anyway, the man takes Alexia back with him to live at the fire station where he lives and works. We slowly realize that the man’s son died as a child. There’s no way he can continue to misidentify Alexia – with her pregnant belly barely concealed and the huge scar above her ear. But instead of killing him, or anybody, she stays. She takes on the role of his son. They both find the love they’re looking for. In the end, he delivers her car baby. She dies, having told him her name, but the child survives. 

I liked this movie. Saw it in theaters as a matinee along with three other people (one of whom walked out thirty minutes in). I had high expectations because of how thoroughly Raw blew me away. This movie was extreme, but it didn’t have the same tightness and narrative coherency that Raw had. The serial killer thing is the part that threw me off. That plus how suddenly we shifted into this other thing – this her being mistaken for a boy. It was jarring and then we left the serial killing behind (which had also been jarring). Plus the car sex/baby thing, which I was on board with. But it’s a lot to take on board all together. Plus the car accident/plate in her head thing. It didn’t seem to really connect to the other stuff, other than head injuries being common in people who end up being serial killers, and maybe the connection that since she’s part metal, she can make a baby with a car? The actors who played Alexia and Vincent (the man who’s lost his son) were fantastic. 

I’m glad to have watched it. Rooting hard for Ducournau in general. 

Rating: ★★★

October 11, 2021

Drank too much this weekend, meaning a few alcoholic beverages a day. My body doesn't like it after awhile. It's made me a little irritable today. Also, if I've had a few drinks, I tend to wake up in the middle of the night and have a hard time getting back to sleep. 

Things have been getting away from me a little bit. It was easier, during quarantine, to stick to a schedule. With more of the full craziness of life kicking back in, it's gotten harder to manage. I want things to be better regulated for myself, but I also want things to tilt into full chaos mode. Newness. Adventures every day. Living by the seat of my pants. I don't think it's burnout exactly. I still want to write my scripts. Make things. Stay on top of it. But I also want to... not. 

Mlog time! 

THE HATEFUL EIGHT

2015

Directed by: Quentin Tarantino

Written by: Quentin Tarantino

Watched: 10/3/21

Two bounty hunters meet up ahead of a blizzard in rural Wyoming. Major Marquis Warren’s horse has died and he’s trying to take his three dead bounties into town. John Ruth has hired a private stagecoach and is taking his bounty, Daisy Domergue, into town alive. They plan on stopping at Minnie’s Lodge on the way in, as they won’t make it all the way to town before the blizzard. They also pick up Chris Mannix, a south-supporter, who will die if he doesn’t get a ride. When the four arrive at Minnie’s, Minnie and her husband Sweet Dave aren’t there. A Mexican is running the place for them while they’re gone, which Major Marquis finds suspicious. There’s an old southern general there, a man who claims he’s on his way to see his mother, and the hangman for the nearest town. There’s strife over the north/south divide, this being very near the Civil War. (1877 says Wikipedia) Marquis, a black man, manages to rile the General enough to get him to pull a trigger on him, so Marquis can kill him. This particular general killed a lot of black soldiers instead of taking them as prisoners of war. 

Then somebody poisons the coffee. John Ruth and the stage coach driver both die. Marquis and Mannix have to work together (both of them nearly drank the coffee) to figure out who the poisoner is. They figure whoever that is is working with Daisy to try to free her. It turns out everybody is working with Daisy. They’re all part of her gang, and they killed Minnie and sweet Dave and set everything up. They didn’t figure on the two extra men arriving with John Ruth. Marquis and Mannix prevail in the end. Sort of. They’ve both been shot and are going to die, but they manage to kill all the gang members and hang Daisy. 

The movie was pretty good. The n word is in it a lot, which was tough. But it was nice that, for all the times Daisy got hit in the face (or her toe shot off), there wasn’t once where sexual violence was threatened or insinuated. That was straight up refreshing. The wide snowy vistas were incredible. When the poisoning of the coffee happens, it’s not shown (the general/Marquis shooting is going on instead). Quentin Tarantino himself just comes on in voice over, explaining that someone poisoned the coffee and only Daisy saw whoever it was. This interjection works like a charm. It’s exciting, probably more exciting than if we were to see a mysterious hand poison the coffee. But also – for fuck sake. All these screenwriting books and classes giving people all these rules. “Show not tell” etc. When you look at actual movies, there are elements that are all over the place. I won’t write and expository VO for the director anytime soon, but it underscores for me how you can get away with a lot as long as you just do it with confidence. 

Rating: ★★★

October 7, 2021

I'm taking Intro to Filmmaking at SMC. I love SMC. So cheap. Such quality instruction. Such good access to resources and equipment. It's likely the youngest class I've been a part of (especially compared to my age). The students seem really sweet and friendly. I think several might be on their first semester at SMC and are looking to meet friends. We had a long protracted break during this week's class. (It had to do with an assessment situation.) And I ended up talking with a group of my classmates for an hour. It was enjoyable, but I felt vaguely dissociated. Like I was there but not in the normal way I am when I hang out with a group. I'm conscious that everyone else is at a different place in their lives, and I feel like I can watch on from a far in addition to being a part of the conversation. I hope it's not making me sad. 

BLog Time! 

**SPOILERS**

Vedantam, Shankar – THE HIDDEN BRAIN

Published: 2010

Read: 09/2021

I thought this book was published more recently. There was a que for it at the library. It being published in 2010 might explain why they didn’t have Vedantam himself read it. Instead, Steve West narrates. He’s a white English guy, and it’s weird when he gets to parts saying things like, “As someone born in India....” Vedantam has a great voice – I’ve heard it on the podcast! Hopefully, he reads his own book next time. 

Hidden Brain is about the work our unconscious brains are doing without our rational/cognitive brains being aware of it. Examples include, racial and gender bias, the tendency to form consensus in large groups in times of emergency, plus some other ones. I probably waited too long between finishing the book and writing this post, to be honest. All of the content was interesting, but I started to think of it as The Book of Bad News. The Undoing Project also covers a lot of this stuff—the stuff we’re missing because our cognitive mind doesn’t catch it. It’s depressing to think that our attitude towards certain people – our biases – are out of reach of our general intentions. The Hidden Brain, the unconscious mind, learns through experience and repetition. That’s somewhat manageable. I think Vedantam’s point across the board isn’t that we should all be depressed, but that we should acknowledge the influence of the hidden brain and work to find solutions that encompass it. 

Rating: ★★★

Rooney, Sally – NORMAL PEOPLE

Published: 2018

Read: 10/2021

Normal People is about Connell and Marianne, high schoolers at the beginning of the novel and just out of college by the end. They’re from a predominantly working-class part of Ireland, although Marianne’s family is rich. Connell’s mom cleans Marianne’s house. Connell’s athletic and popular at school, even though he’s laconic. Marianne is an outcast because she’s weird, overly intelligent, and doesn’t care what people think. The two start sleeping together, but they keep it a secret because Connell, especially, is worried what his friends might think. They both go to Trinity College in Dublin on scholarship. (They’re both highly intelligent and good students.) This time, Marianne is in her element and Connell is out of it. Connell has never really thought about his personality. At home, everyone knows who he is and his personality seems outside of himself, something assigned to him by other people. Now he has the challenge of making friends and fitting in with a much more urbane and well-off group of people. He doesn’t feel he can fit in and feels he doesn’t fit in with his old school friends either. He falls into a depression. Marianne deals with familial trauma by getting into sexually abusive relationships. Marianne and Connell occupy different rolls in one another’s lives, sometimes intimate and sometimes not. 

This book was literature. Insightful descriptions capturing the stuff of life. A close look into two characters. Compelling without needing to add any zombies. I kept thinking of Anna Karenina at the end. It’s a much shorter, less complicated, novel than Tolstoy, but it has the same vibrancy. In tone and topic, it also reminded me of Lena Dunham’s Girls. Although obviously that’s a TV show. In the reviews I’m reading of it, it’s often tagged as a millennial novel. That’s fair, I guess. It’s lovely and a little odd to have something that seems resonant with my own time and experience presented so beautifully. 

Good stuff. 

Rating: ★★★★

October 6, 2021

I've found lately that there's a benefit in listening. It's worrying to leave that realization to this late in my life. (34 isn't so old but it also is a lot of years for me to be bloviating on and on.) I'm a decent listener in one-to-one conversation if the other person has my same verbal inclination. What I'm realizing is that in both group and one-to-one settings, you can get a lot more out of people if you sustain listening and allow pauses/silences. Some people are just a bit slower or shyer in formulating their thoughts, but they will speak up if you just listen and wait. Louis Theroux takes advantage of that in his interviews. He'll leave a big gap, a big silence, and people's instinct is to fill it. 

I don't know what the impulse is inside me to get the thoughts from the inside of my head to outside in the world, but it seems to be a bit quieter lately. I've got a counter impulse going that says, "Hold on. Wait. See what happens." It feels powerful, nice. 

I think it's fairly good experiential evidence that when you act differently towards the world, your experience of the world changes. It seems worthwhile to switch up one's behavior from time to time just to see what happens. 

Blog Time! 

**SPOILERS**

 Margolyes, Miriam – THIS MUCH IS TRUE

Published: 2021

Read: 9/2021

I know Miriam Margolyes as Aunt Prudence from Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, but she’s also the nurse in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliette and Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter films. She came on radar as a personality when I listened to her episode of Louis Theroux’s Grounded podcast. She’s energetic, filthy, honest. This Much Is True is her memoir. I listened to the audiobook, which I highly recommend. Margolyes is a voice actor and has about a hundred different accents she can do. She talks about her Jewish parents, her social-climbing mother and her reserved Scottish father. She talks about her skilled ability at sucking people off. She’s a lesbian and says she doesn’t feel groinally about men, but she likes making people feel good. Several of her stories – like being stuck on a fishing boat and having the fisherman pull his dick out – would have scared me for life, I think. But she seems to get through them with her willingness to give out a hand job and a kind of determined naivety. She says of that occasion, “Well, I didn’t want to get raped.” A decent survival technique to be sure, but still kind of awful. I’m glad she doesn’t seem to feel too weighed down by it. 

She also talks about her partner, Heather, and the time she had an affair with a professor at Colorado College. (“I won’t fuck anyone without a PhD.”) About the houses she owns. About the life she’s built for herself. I will say, that the only drawback for me in reading this kind of book is I can get sad that I don’t have a bunch of famous friends, that I haven’t worked on projects with international success. There’s no point in comparing myself to other people; it takes a toll on the ol’ mental health. And the lives of career entertainers can be a little bit of a trap that way. I like Miriam’s force of character, her panache, her willingness to be up front about things, her bad language, her shocking stories. It was delightful to sit on the tour bus of her life. 

Rating: ★★★

October 1, 2021

 Alice Fraser posted an entry on her Patreon that I liked. She talked about the discussion over whether or not to have a female James Bond. Her thought being that the behavior and flaws of the character are linked to being a straight white man, i.e. the dominant cultural identity. If Bond were a women, he'd be a different character. So why not create a totally different character? From a business point of view, it's definitely that creating a new character is much more risky. There's security in a known quantity, a guarantee of making at least some of your money back. 

Alice goes on: 

"I don’t think people want a female Bond or a black Bond, they just want the authority and status and legitimacy conferred by the 007 legacy. They want someone who is as famous and beloved as Bond, but isn’t that character. Which is fair enough. The weight of history and the benefit of the doubt that comes with the repeated success of a franchise is a huge deal. Which is an understandable thing to want, but to get it by just … superimposing X on the template is not a big step forward. It’s trickle down cultural economics. You can’t overturn patriarchal mores by insisting on being accepted and applauded by the patriarchy. It feels like a shortcut up the ladder, but is ultimately self defeating, because isn’t the goal to build more ladders, and stairs, and general upward-helping structures?"

And: 

"What happens when people of oppressed groups can’t conceive of a model for success that doesn’t involve cosplaying as the oppressors is the same oppression in a different hat. It doesn’t really matter if it has a new face, or if it is being done unwillingly or ironically or sarcastically."

These are good questions. It reminds me of James Tiptree Jr.'s "Houston, Houston, do you read?" She's come up with a society that's been summarily composed of women for hundreds of years, and it's not just that women are in charge -- the whole society is different. It values different things. Other examples: Herland, The Dispossessed. Notably, all three of these stories are science-fiction, which makes sense as the job of science fiction is to think about societal overhauls. Not just to mimic variations on examples we already have. 

MLog Time! 

**SPOILERS**

MCCABE & MRS. MILLER

1971

Directed by: Robert Altman

Written by: Robert Altman, Brian McKay

Based on: McCabe by Edmund Naughton

Watched: 9/30/21

Set during the American frontier days in Washington state, John McCabe (a rumored gunfighter) is building a saloon in a new mining town. He sets up a makeshift whorehouse – three unsightly woman in their own tents – and gets to work. Mrs. Miller, a formidable woman with a cockney accent, arrives and makes a deal with him: she’ll set up and run a proper brothel if he puts up the money for the building. She’ll pay him back and they’ll split profits 50/50. He agrees, and Mrs. Miller brings women down from Seattle. They build a bathhouse (which the men are required to use before they partake of the brothel’s services) and a nice structure for the girls to live and work in. They’re making plenty of money before long. Too much money. Representatives from a business come down and try to buy McCabe out. (They successfully buy out the other man in town who owns the restaurant and hotel.) McCabe bargains with them, trying to push up the price. He continues to do so even after Mrs. Miller warns him that the company will resort to violence. The men leave and send three hitmen in their stead. McCabe tries to make a deal, but it’s too late. (Upon meeting McCabe, the lead hitman concludes that McCabe has never killed a man in his life, a far cry from the dangerous gunslinger he was rumored to be.) As McCabe tries to kill and not be killed by the hitmen, the church catches on fire and everyone scrambles to put it out. McCabe kills the would-be assassins by hiding in various buildings. The last man he kills by pretending to have gotten shot and then firing at the man at close range. Unfortunately, McCabe had been shot in the stomach, and he dies outside in the snow while Mrs. Miller lies sedated in an opium den. (Thank you Wikipedia for that last phrase.) I should add that McCabe and Mrs. Miller had been sleeping together, but Mrs. Miller always charged him her usual fee. 

This movie is beautiful. It feels real and immersive and like it’s getting at how frontier towns at that time really might have been. The whorehouse looked positively cozy. Warren Beatty played McCabe. He plays him awkward, antsy, almost ADD, bumbling but with plenty of ego and projected confidence. Definitely not your John Wayne type cowboy. I should have liked the performance – I like it on paper. But I felt like Beatty was self-satisfied in the role. Like Look at me act! I’m really acting! I’m sure that’s a projection on my part. I’m reading Miriam Margolyes’ memoir right now, and she describes the first time she met Beatty. First thing he said was, “Do you fuck?” I just really get creepy uncle vibes from him, and it’s distracting. 

I also had trouble paying attention. I would have enjoyed the movie more if I saw it in a theater, I think. Distractions eliminated. The beauty full size. Some of it’s my fault, but I definitely didn’t like this one as much as I would have wanted to. 

Rating: ★★1/2