My Favorite Movies… This Week

We were having a small, fun family dinner last week and one of our nieces wanted to know the answer to a very simple question:

What’s your #1 film?

Being who I am I had to answer a question with a question before I could answer the question.

Ummm, well, do you mean the film that I think is the best film ever made or the film that I personally like the best?

It didn’t help at all when she answered:

How about both?

Of course at this point I began explaining that either way I couldn’t narrow it down to one. There are so many different types of movies I love and watch again and again but couldn’t claim were the best for anyone but me. There were also others that I would place in the top five or ten that wouldn’t be my personal favorite but….

At which point someone else said, The Wizard of Oz and my husband interjected Day for Night..

As I then began sputtering out in no particular order All About Eve, The Way We Were, Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, Postcards from the Edge and Annie Hall (Note: The latter with the disclaimer that it used to be but now, well, it’s hard to watch, which led to a discussion of why, which I don’t want to get into for various reasons and is the subject of another blog).

I then quickly explained Hitchcock was one of my favorite filmmakers and that despite it not being his most artsy I just love Psycho.

As well as most every Almodóvar movie, and many of the films of Paul Thomas Anderson. But that I couldn’t leave out….Billy Wilder or Scorsese and that even though Gone With The Wind is so problematic from a contemporary lens I loved the book and the film as a teenager, which is ironic because of how pissed I was that BlacKkKlansman didn’t win the best picture Oscar that year over what I judged to be the far more retro Green Book and…

Well, you get it.

I’m a parlor game buzzkill because nothing is simple in my brain. But as a lifelong movie fan, there is especially nothing is simple for me about the movies.

So much to love for so many reasons.

And damn, what kind of gay man would I be if I didn’t include the restored Judy Garland version of A Star Is Born and Jacque Demy’s Umbrellas of Cherbourg?

See, I can’t stop.

Which is sort of the point.

There is something about the movies.

Plays are great, books are wonderful when they are and nothing is better these days than a great season of a streaming show. (Note: Yes, Baby Reindeer and Hacks were fantastic but this year I was riveted to Carmy’s existential crisis all through season three of The Bear and couldn’t care less how many stars his fakakta restaurant got – that wasn’t the point!).

Don’t even get me started on the Tina episode!

Not to mention music, museums and one of a kind events like Luna, Luna.

But if you’re a pop culture freak of nature of a certain age like I am, films are… well… forever.

Something immersive that’s eternally branded in your mind.

Perhaps it’s because the second golden age of 1970s cinema was where I came of age.

Maybe it’s that movies run such a gamut, or require brain power from totally passive to you better f’n pay attention or you’ll miss something.

It could also be the special kind of escape they provide for a prolonged period of time without anyone else around – at home or in a darkened theatre – the latter being a place you can easily pretend no one else is around as long as no one’s brought their crying kid. #ChildlessCatPeoplePower.

Or thinks it’s their living room. #ShutTheFUp

In the more than a week since my niece asked her question I only today realized none of this matters because left to my own devices (Note: A dangerous place to be) films are my unwinding mechanism.

And there are not just one type nor do they have to be on my aforementioned “favorites”:

I happened to turn on TCM a few days ago and there were the beginning credits of Silkwood. A bunch of friends worked on it and I hadn’t seen it in years. But I doubted I’d re-watch a story of radiation, friendship and corporate corruption even with the help of Mike Nichols, Meryl Streep and Cher because it’d been a trying week. But it had me. And kept me. Not only did it hold up all these years but I found the sheer unabashed chauvinistic anger at the power of a strong woman like the late Karen Silkwood to be strangely energizing because of how absolutely infuriating and relevant it remains.

But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t equally into the new feature-length documentary on MAX entitled, Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes, a few days before. It’s an actual movie about THE biggest movie star of the 20^th century which she narrates via numerous reels of “lost “tapes she recorded in the mid-late sixties for a planned biography that never came to be.

She’s bawdy, funny, smart and clever but what she is more than anything else is honest. It’s a treat to hear the dish on the movies, the life, the triumphs and the tragedies from the source but it’s even better to see it unfold in the filmic images and real-life footage put together in motion picture form by a director as creative as Nanette Burstein.

I was busy this week but in the last couple of days the air sucked and my sinuses swelled so I chose to stay inside and read once I caught up on some politics (Note: Idiot). At which point, I changed channels and there was another really great contemporary film that should have won the Oscar for best picture – The Social Network. (The King’s Speech? Seriously????).

I know, who wants to see the Mark Zuckerberg story at this point, right? But I’d forgotten how much of an even-handed anti-hero Aaron Sorkin’s script made him and how well David Fincher’s frenetic filmmaking captured what, from our current rear view mirror, seems like a very strangely naïve era we couldn’t quite appreciate at the time. #MoviesCanDoThat.

Not knowing I’d be writing about movies but still staying hermetically sealed at home I continued, checking out the much maligned recent film The Bikeriders starring Austin Butler and Jodie Comer. Dismissed by many top critics and a few friends, it was bizarre, fascinating, funny and sort of touching. I’m not into 1960’s motorcycle culture and I never imagined an English actress like Comer could so convincingly pull off working class Chicago (Note: Though why not after what she did on “Killing Eve?”) yet it was fascinating. And Mr. Butler is just so much more enjoyable on a motorcycle than slithering his way through sand in Dune 2.

I guess now is the time where I admit that before I gave in and went outside on a walk/run this afternoon I spent two hours rewatching the critical and audience drubbed film version of Jersey Boys, directed by Clint Eastwood. Yeah, it’s sort of schmaltzy, a little cartoony and was definitely shot on the Warner Bros. backlot.

But jeez, it’s a movie fantasy musical melodrama. And the soooonnnggggs.

Sherry, Walk Like A Man, Big Girls Don’t Cry, Let’s Hang On, Working My Way Back to You… And the Italian guys from the neighborhood I grew up with that I seldom hung out with but loved from afar. Fuggedaboudit….

It was a time capsule back to an imagined version of the life of a real-life singer (Frankie Valli, of The Four Seasons) with movie mobsters, movie people and melodramatic movie heartbreak played against a purposely and infectiously nostalgic movie soundtrack.

It’s not Elizabeth Taylor, nor does it address corporate malfeasance, social media or the evolution of pop culture movements. We have those, as well as many other films, for that.

And for a lot more.

Jersey Boys – “Sherry” (at the White House)

06.23.24

by notesfromachair

Is The Graduate ruined for me?

I was watching The Graduate for probably the 25^th time last weekend.

It’s always been on my top 10 list of films. And not only because, like its protagonist, I was also a confused 20-year-old boy-man who graduated college early and had yet to have sex with anyone.

Did I just admit that publicly? Well, if that’s the worst thing you can say about me…

In any event – Mike Nichols’ direction; the performances by Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft; the funny, squirmy, ring of truth screenplay by Buck Henry and Calder Willingham based on Charles Webb’s novel. And so much more. It ALL works.

Doesn’t it?

Well, it did for me. The first 24 times. Until last week when I was stopped dead in my tracks by one of its most potent sequences.

It’s about 15-20 minutes in when the sensuously seductive, middle-aged and married Mrs. Robinson coerces young Benjamin into driving her home and then condescendingly intimidates him into walking her inside her house and up the stairs to see her daughter’s portrait because she’s “afraid to be alone.”

Do people even get portraits done anymore?

Upstairs and in her daughter’s room, Benjamin’s now a nervous wreck, but, well, at least this is almost over. Until she begins to get undressed for bed, at which point he runs down the stairs to leave and she calls down to him, demanding he bring up her purse and put it back on the bed in her daughter’s room.

Which he does. Cause that’s what guys like us do.

At which point he turns and sees her quickly re-enter fully naked, lock the door to prevent him from leaving and stand boldly in front of him. She then declares – in a measured but very definitive voice – she is available to sleep with and that if he won’t do it now he should call her any time, day or night and they will make arrangements. It’s not a seduction so much as a challenge, bordering on a demand.

Never mind Mrs. Robinson is a long-time family friend and that her husband is his father’s long-time business partner. Or – creep alert – that she’s known since his toddler years. It doesn’t matter to her. One bit.

Except to him it does.

And Mrs. Robinson knows that. Because as she stares him down, still in front of that locked door, she demands he tell her he understands not only what she is saying but what she really means. And by her tone, it’s clear she won’t take no for answer.

If only Benjamin had this gif to express himself

Benjamin begins to stammer, sighs deeply and, in a desperate panic, finally says the words. At which point he pushes her naked torso out of the way, there’s a closeup of his fumbling hands unlocking that door, and he runs all the way down the stairs and out of the house in panic.

We don’t see Mrs. Robinson’s reaction to his exit but all through the scenes leading up to this climactic (Note: Though not quite. Not yet.) moment she smirks, lies, manipulates and even gently laughs at him. She’s confident this kid will soon be intrigued and very likely tempted. After all, she knows she’s eye candy to any man, especially a boy-man who is lucky enough to get a full-frontal, closeup view of her in the actual flesh. She’s doing HIM a favor. Trapped or not and whether he likes it or not.

But…how could he not like it???

This is how it read to me in 2024, a time when I am long past my twenties and far more experienced than I ever dreamed I’d be all those years ago.

The predatory behavior. Exposing yourself to an inexperienced minor (Note: It wasn’t until the early 1970s that the age of consent was changed from 21 to 18) in a room you lock from the inside. Not letting them leave until they either have sex with you or verbally, and convincingly, say they will consider it at some future date.

Some might consider it potentially traumatizing. If not downright abusive. Or even illegal.

Of course, in 1967 this was not only acceptable but a key factor in making the film one of the biggest box-office and critical hits of the decade. Benjamin was considered a lucky guy and Mrs. Robinson was thought of as a MILF (Note: A today term, but apt) doing him an, ahem, solid.

A neurotic mess when she locked that door, he would even continue to be a few sequences later when they check into a hotel room together. That is until he resists immediately f-king her once inside and she begins to laugh at him – and then accuses him of being gay.

That does it. He turns the lights out and it’s game on.

It took all that effort and all those “insults” for him to become a man. A guy who only months later would have the nerve to date her daughter and treat her shabbily, then decide he’s fallen in love with her even though she hates him, and then go all out and finally manage to convince her to marry him.

What could go ever wrong?

Thanks to Mrs. Robinson, Benjamin will NEVER need therapy. Not only that, he has finally found the stones to stand up for himself and get what and who he wants against all odds.

As all real men do.

A few questions to consider:

What would we have said if Benjamin were Belinda and MR. Robinson locked HER in a room and exposed HIMSELF? Likely, that would not have been considered a good thing then or now. But if we kept the sexes of Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson intact? Do we think any differently about it, even today?

How about if Benjamin didn’t respond to all that pressure and was impotent with Mrs. Robinson that first time in their hotel room because he was simply nervous? What’s the aftermath? Or his next move in the dating pool? And, well, how would that go?

Or imagine a gay but closeted Benjamin in 1967. Would all this have changed him into believing he was straight? Or added yet another level of self-hatred to his pitiful secret desires? Perhaps it would immediately force him out of the closet simply to prove something. And what exactly would the result have been back then?

Revisiting a socially liberal, though seemingly apolitical classic like The Graduate and realizing it doesn’t fully hold up to contemporary morality, doesn’t mean we were all wrong about it. Nor does it detract from its craft, its humor, its insightfulness or its fine performances. It simply gives new perspectives on human behavior. And enlightens us on the nuances of consent and the dynamics of power.

TCM host and film scholar Jacqueline Stewart wrote about Gone With The Wind in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death and America’s new, imperfect reckoning with race. While others called for it to be pulled off the MAX platform, she instead wrote an introduction to contextualize it and led a filmed discussion for viewers who wanted to revisit it and see classic cinema for its flaws as well as its greatness.

She notes GWTW glorifies a system of brutality (e.g. slavery) and downplays the inhumane treatment of African people in a way that has shaped Americans’ understanding of race. But elaborates that given its enduring popularity the answer is not to ban it altogether but rather use its allure as a way to educate ourselves…The ability to complicate the pleasure we get from these works…puts us in a position of having more meaningful discussions about them.

On that note, there is a riveting documentary/play/movie that was just launched on MAX this weekend called, Slave Play. Not A Movie. A Play. Directed by Jeremy O. Harris, who wrote the provocative, and much acclaimed theatre piece, Slave Play, whose Broadway production received 12 Tony nominations several years ago, it’s a unique offering.

In under two hours, we get to see very dramatic, whole sections of various incarnations of the show from early workshopping to Broadway excerpts, as well as staged scenes Mr. Harris directed at the Yale Drama School.

More importantly, it contextualizes not only issues of race but queerness, love, marriage and yes, consent, in ways most of us have likely not ever considered or connected before.

If I told you that you would get to see period Civil War era scenes of a Southern white woman order her mulatto slave to have sex with her; a Black gay man humiliate his gay, white trash partner; or a Civil War overseer refuse to beat a Black female slave even though she urges him on, you might well say – um, that’s not for me.

But in actuality, that’s what Mr. Harris wants you to say. And think.

So he can then pull the rug out from under you mid-way through and let you know what this is all really about.

It’s insight that can happen when those of us who watch movies, television and theatre – the old, the recent and the new – get to see them through a contemporary gaze. When we don’t shut our minds off but instead open them up to all types of material and ways of thinking we failed to consider previously or perhaps never could have imagined.

Simon and Garfunkel – “Mrs. Robinson”

notes from a chair

Tag Archives: Mike Nichols

Is The Graduate ruined for me?