New Blog!!!!! Again!!!!!

Yeah, I get bored easily. I'm starting another blog. What can I say, I'm a wayward and inconstant doof. I like "12 grand in checking" a lot, but I feel like this blog is too aimless sometimes and therefore has no identity. I need an identity. That's why I cooked up my idea for a blog that's more focused, more purposeful; something that can incorporate my love for older pop culture and tie it more directly into my interest in current-day cultural politics.

The guiding philosophy of the new blog is what I'm calling a "retro manifesto," which argues that early and mid 20th century pop culture AS A WHOLE is superior to the pop culture of today. It's not to say that there's nothing good going on in the pop arts today (that's obviously not how I feel since I watch and read and listen to plenty of current stuff), but that, taken as a whole, our culture was simply better (in terms of popular media -- music, film, television, literature, comics, journalism, etc.) "back then" than it is today. Maybe you think that theory's all wet, but I don't care. I'm a true believer. I think it's important to spread the retro love around and maybe get some converts. Call it retro evangelization, if you will. I want to proclaim the gospel of retro and hopefully bring in the wayward prodigals who realize there's something a little soulless and empty in their day-to-day media consumption that a walk on the retro side might cure.

See, the thing about retro is: there's no corporate cross-promotion or blaring, inescapable wall of media to bludgeon you into paying attention to it. There's no incessant advertising campaign, no constant headlines, no subtle groupthink that informs pretty much everything "current" that we come across in the media maelstrom. Retro culture is an old toy in the attic, the one the world tells us is useless and gross and weird and old -- irrelevant -- but the retro lover is the one who can break out of media conformity and see beyond the groupthink haze, the one who looks at that dusty old toy and thinks, "Why not?" And then a new world opens up. Suddenly he begins to question the assumptions of his age and he's no longer a slave to what the current media world has to offer. Suddenly, he can know a time and a place and a people beyond the bubble of his twenty-something lifetime. It's about realizing that you don't have to be stuck with "beautiful" women like Paris Hilton for your image icons or the latest cookie-cutter rap star for your musical "geniuses" -- Ava Gardner and Rita Hayworth and Carole Lombard are waiting for you; Frank Sinatra and George Gershwin and Cole Porter are waiting for you. That's what my retro revolution is all about.

The new blog uses salty, rough-edged language, so you've been warned. It's more provocative because I figure it takes a bit of blaring hyperbole to get read on the internet and I do want to be read (I mean, I write because I like to, but let's face it, we all want eyeballs looking at our page). It'll be a mindtrip through all the movies, TV, music, art, comics, literature, and nostalgic junk that I dig (and dig up) from the past. It'll be a little more political and little more strident. It won't be all old stuff all the time -- I'll find time to wax on about the greatness of things like NBC's action-comedy-drama CHUCK or the latest garage punk band I'm blissing out to at the moment -- but I'll try to always bring it back to The Retro if I can. I'm also considering a podcast and other "extras." I want the new blog to be big. It's my mad-scientist experiment in making retroheaded monsters, technicolor punks for a new millennium.

Enter DERELICTION ROW!

My Highly Personal Top New York Movie Moments: #3. Almost Famous

"It's all happening." If there's ever a sentence that describes New York City, it's that one. It's all happening in New York: business, theater, arts, sports, fashion, life. The city that never sleeps, the place where all the world seems gathered in Times Square at 2 a.m., it's the center of everything. In NYC, it's all happening because anything can happen.


"It's all happening" is one of the great lines from Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous. It's the constant refrain of the rock 'n' roll characters because it expresses the very ethos of their lifestyle: limitless possibilities -- for drugs and sex and love and music, for anything that can be experienced. For the rock stars and their groupies (sorry, "Band Aids"), "It's all happening," is both a hopeful declaration and a desperate plea. It all has to happen -- right now, tonight, after the show -- because all these people have is "the moment," the brief window of The Now in order to feel something, anything that will give their lives meaning. Anything for that human connection and a chance to feel alive in this lonely world.


That's why I love the New York sequence in Almost Famous. It manages to capture both the limitless possibilities which are promised by the city as well as the desparate loneliness that lurks around its edges. It give us New York as a world for Cool and Hip and Rich. And then it give us New York for the Melancholy, for the world-weary coming down after the high of champagne and quaaludes. And perhaps best of all, it gives us New York in the 70s not as it was in reality, but as it was made to seem by the movies of that era. The Almost Famous New York sequence is like an amalgam of Zeppelin's The Song Remains the Same concert film, Annie Hall, and a Neil Simon play.


And as if the images and writing weren't enough to evoke "1970s New York," Crowe throws in one of the best Elton John songs ever -- Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters -- to play over one of the movie's most climactic moments. If ever there was a song that breathed New York, it is Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters. This swirling, bittersweet ode to the city takes me to Manhattan every time I hear it. The song simply IS New York for me.





All those yellow cabs against the browns and greens and grays of 1970s Manhattan, that mandolin strum, Elton John's voice calling out to the weary streets, a kid recklessly, desperately, dashing out onto the sidewalk to find the girl he loves -- that's New York City.


Cool and slick and chic. New York has moved beyond the already-fading "grooviness" of the hippie culture.

New York is glam, baby.


New York is a suite at the Plaza, gaudy, decadent, and filled with booze and pills and room service, and it's all just expensive set dressing for an adolescent love story. It's an impossibly tragic and romantic moment, a little bit cynical maybe, but also fantasy, a moment that doesn't take itself too seriously even though the heart of the moment is utterly sincere. He's about to go where many, many men have gone before. And he doesn't care. Because he loves her. That's New York.



I can't think of a better description of the magic of New York than this image.


The scene where Penny Lane tells William all her secrets. In the original script, this beautiful moment is set in an airport terminal. Thank God, Cameron Crowe changed that. What better place to walk off a hang-over and open up your heart than in Central Park?

Penny: I guess what I'm trying to say is, that I've done twice the things I said I've done.
William: What about your mom?
Penny: She always said -- 'Marry Up.' Marry someone grand. That's why she named me Lady.
William: She named you Lady?
Penny: Lady Goodman.
William: Lady Goodman? That's... great. [and he means it too]
Penny: Now you know all my secrets.

It's all happening in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous, one of my favorite New York movie moments.

Song of the Week

In a Lonely Place by The Smithereens

A Savage Omission

Maybe I missed her, what with the constantly moving camera, the pull-backs and wide shots and weird angles, and Queen Latifah taking up half the frame half the time, but I didn't see Ann Savage in the "In Memoriam" tribute at the Oscars. What gives? No love for "Vera"?

Not cool, Academy. Not cool. I was kinda hoping for a little Noir moment in the montage, a little Richard Widmark, followed by Evelyn Keyes, then Ann Savage, and then Jules Dassin to round it out. Instead, Ann was missing, and the other three were interspersed throughout instead of grouped together as they should have been.

I don't know why I keep expecting the people in Hollywood today to be geeky film lovers like me, but every year I keep tuning in to the Oscars to hear if the people in the audience will cheer wildly for old timers from the Golden Age -- like Nina Foch and James Whitmore this year -- and every year I'm disappointed.

Here's to Ann!

Shoulda Won the Oscar... It's the song of the week!

I know a lot of people wanted "Blame Canada" to win (and really, how awesome would that have been if it had?!). But for pure emotional punch; for making me cry every dang time I watch it; for the sheer beauty of that golden sunlight as it streams through the autumn leaves of the trees. For all the heartache and longing and sadness and truth contained in these few minutes. Shoulda won the Oscar for Best Song in 1999:



"When She Loved Me" written by Randy Newman, performed by Sarah McLachlan

A Little Trouble in Big Hollywood

I'm saying this as a friend. I'm sympathetic to Big Hollywood's mission and I especially admire editor-in-chief John Nolte, whom I've been following for years both on Libertas and his own website Dirty Harry's Place. I'm a cinephile and I'm a conservative.

But something just ain't right at Big H'wood. It's not that the website is terrible or unreadable or anything like that. I usually find something of interest there everyday. But it's not living up to its potential, and in fact, I think it might be hurting the conservative movement more than helping it.

For instance, a lot of the posts at Big Hollywood come off as whiny and negative. Many of the site's contributors spend all their Big H bandwidth pissing and moaning about all the stoopid liberal actors and liberal films that come out of Hollywood and it's not really all that fun to read, even when I happen to agree with what they're pissing and moaning about. It's like being in high school again and Big Hollywood is the band room where all the band geeks spend their lunch hour bitching and talking shit about how mean and evil the popular kids are. It may be kinda true, but it's a drag to listen to day after day. I love the TCM Pick O' the Day from John Nolte, and I think a lot of that has to do with the positive tone that comes with these posts. It's a celebration of film and there's a real love of cinema evident in Nolte's writing. Plus, he's trying to educate the masses about The Greats.

(Note: I think the model for Big Hollywood in this respect should be the conservative pop culture blog Yeah Right. This is a website that is upbeat, fun, pop culture-driven and not politics-driven, while still maintaining a conservative approach to pop culture and the arts.)

The other problem I've noticed is this: there doesn't seem to be much LOVE for cinema at Big Hollywood (other than the notable exception of Nolte's stuff and the posts from Robert Avrech). As the Self-Styled Siren has pointed out: "[Big Hollywood] is tilting toward being just a conservative site with the occasional movie review." I completely agree. Frankly, one Hot Air is enough, but it seems like Big H'wood is striving to be Hot Air West. It's mostly the same old political commentary that could be found at any number of big right wing websites and what's the use of that? It's just more white noise in the increasingly echo-chamber-like political blogosphere.

Many of the posts at BH are only tangentially related to movies, TV, or theater. Often, it's just a Hollywood conservative writing about what's cheesing him off that week -- no different that the site's liberal counterpart, the Huffington Post, and just as uninteresting.

My (probably unrealistic) ideal for Big Hollywood is of a place where conservatives can write about film and television from a place of love and passion -- as film lovers who happen to be conservative, not conservatives who happen to watch films.

This is most evident in the comments sections. A little story to illustrate my point:

I happened to be reading a fun article from Nolte about the top 5 films you know you're supposed to think are great but just can't dig, and I thought Nolte's choices were thought-provoking and a little surprising. It was a good article. Then I started to make my way through the comments and ever-so-slowly I began to feel a knot in my stomach. Were the people commenting here really my fellow conservative cinephiles? Were these philistines really representative of the conservative "movie lover"?! I was so shocked by the lack of taste and judgement of several of the people who commented -- people who share my political persuasion -- that I was ready to stamp an Obamessiah Hopeychangey bumper sticker on my car and just give up on the Reagan Revolution completely. It wasn't just that many of them missed the point of Nolte's article (Nolte's point, as I understand it, wasn't to say definitively that these five movies aren't great and popular opinion is wrong wrong wrong, but that he just doesn't "get" them for some reason and the fault is probably his own -- that's why he continues to watch them occasionally to see if he can change his mind).

What shocked me was the attitude so many of these people took towards these classic films. As if admitting you think The Maltese Falcon is garbage is some kind of great act of independent thinking and individualism. Like the people who wear it as a badge of honor that they think Shakespeare is boring. Guess what morons? Shakespeare is brilliant. The problem isn't that Shakespeare is boring but that you are dull and incurious.

Similarly, we can argue whether The Maltese Falcon is overrated or not -- and it certainly may not be everyone's favorite type of movie (if you have an aversion to a certain genre, it makes sense you won't like even the masterpieces of that genre). But the triumphant attitude, the smug superiority of the commentators who disparaged certain classics wasn't the same as the humility of Nolte, who recognized that his dislike of certain "classics" might be entirely his own problem and not a reflection on the objective goodness or badness of said films. People were confessing their cinematic "sins" with glee, as if disparaging these films was the same as sticking it to the stuffy liberal elitists in the political realm who said mean things about Sarah Palin. For instance, I don't "get" David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia, but I don't go shouting it in comments sections like it's some badge of honor. Instead, I recognize that my inability to appreciate that film is a deficiency on my part and that my life as a movie buff is probably poorer for it. And it certainly doesn't mean anybody who does like the flick is some Commie Pinko Ivy League Elitist Film Snob Liberal Dhimmicrat.

And it wasn't just that everyone was picking on poor Maltese Falcon in that thread. Casablanca, Citizen Kane, The Godfather (!), Gone with the Wind, and Bicycle Thieves were among the many films that got thrown under the bus. I remember reading through the thread and thinking: "These people want to be taken seriously in a conversation about cinema and art?!" I know I sound like a terrible elitist, but I couldn't help muttering under my breath: "Philistines."

I know the people who run Big Hollywood can't control what kind of people show up to comment on their threads, but if these are the conservative "film lovers" of America, and Big Hollywood is hoping to bring to life a conservative presence in the arts... with these blockheaded commentators as the disciples? Cancel my subscription to the resurrection.

Finally, I think the other problem facing Big Hollywood is the quality of its main articles. Are these the best writers conservative Hollywood has to offer? Some are excellent (the already mentioned Avrech and Nolte, as well as writers Burt Prelutsky and Andrew Klavan, though they post things far too infrequently); and others write interesting stuff on occasion (the anonymous theater guy, Stage Right, is a good example; and comics writer Bill Willingham has made some nice contributions in the past). But then there's everybody else, either writing generic conservative boilerplate stuff or flat-out bad and boring arts commentary and amateur movie reviews.

And this is where I think Big Hollywood gives conservatives a bad name. Stupid comments threads are the norm for big websites like this and they can't really be helped by the people who run the site, but the official contributors need to be held to a higher standard -- they're the public face of conservative entertainment commentary on the Internet, and they're not doing a good enough job of representing us to the wider world. Liberals involved with film and television will continue to dismiss conservatives as long as we settle for the kind of mundane drivel that often shows up on websites like Big Hollywood. Maybe the problem is that there are so few conservatives who can write convincingly and intelligently about the arts that we're forced to suffer through less-than-stellar work. But there are people out there who can help. I've seen Christian Toto show up on Big Hollywood a few times; why isn't he writing more for that site? Also, can anyone compel Terry Teachout or Victor Morton or Peter Suderman to join the show over at Big H?

Conservatives have to hold themselves to a higher standard because we're working against thirty-plus years of liberal domination in the arts and we can't just whine and cry about it, we have to be so thought-provoking and persuasive and witty and insightful that film lovers of whatever political stripe will be clamoring to read what we put out there -- because it's just that darn good. And we have to be writing about movies and TV and books and theater and whatever else as works of art, and not just as excuses to score flimsy -- and uninteresting -- political points. Conservatives should believe that there is more to life than just politics (it's one of the things that I think separates us from radical leftists). We should remember that truth and beauty are worth examining in and of themselves. If the writers at Big Hollywood can approach the arts from a place of love and fascination; if they can write as true film loving conservatives instead of "Conservative Commentators Who Watch Movies;" then maybe those on the left and the right can come together and realize that party affiliation doesn't have to separate us when it comes to engaging with the arts.

If we want to see Hollywood make things that appeal to conservative-minded people, we can't just say, "To Hell with 'em!" We have to show Hollywood that they have something to gain from engaging with conservative art lovers. That *together* we can make better art. Maybe that makes me a squish in some people's eyes, but I don't care. Politics isn't the be-all and end-all for me anyway. It's just something that keeps me distracted in between film screenings.

drunk..... drunk?

yes. I wish i was in my dream now. black and white and smokey. stream of consciousness marathon. i don't mean to be so empty, so fallow and self pitying. it's a fall back position, a default of that certain artistic temperment. i suffer from arrested development. i suffer from immature achievements. i suffer from melon swelling.

why do vodka gimlets taste like the bile of my stomach mixed with expectation? i wish i could taste such possibility, but it always washes away with the reality of my failure. is it possible to be successful at 29? that's my goal, though if I fail I'll always have 32.

It's a sad possibility that nobody realizes the genius of Gregory La Cava. and when I say "nobody" i really mean the fools and glassy-eyed loved ones who tolerate my dereliction. i live in an illusion, so why would I want to escape and face the lonely face of reality, where no one knows the color of ginger rogers's stockings? to sleep, perchance to zone out in television movie playground...

what am i saying?????? what am i doing? i've been writing the same shitty novella since november and i'm so ashamed of it i'm ready to credit the shitpile to one D.Q. McGillicutty, my drug-addled alter ego. Geo. Oeg. Goe. Eog. Spelling is for chumps and hores.

i showed double indemnity to a friend the other day, yesterday or tomorrow, i'm not sure, and it didn't take for her. like the revelation that you and only you is the only one who likes neil sedaka or Caddyshack II, the sad state of solitude, i can't believe i'm writing this for all the rest to see, how could someone NOT like that movie?! i guess i'm just outisde of normal time and felicity; i'm just cut from the mold of nostalgia, the pain from an old wound that i never felt but can feel just the same.

is this what it means to be outside, to be in solitude? i never realized I was so far gone. how much farther can a soul sink before it fans out in a whisper and empties itself into the ether?

i would give my arm for the next person to say they knew what sophisticated boom boom means. i need to listen to happier music.

i need a cigarette. i need a coke. i need a dvd recorder that works. i need a vfccccccccccccccccg xrshytgfmxxxxxxsytmzsjrtzgfnvdfsddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd

whoops. i guess i need a pillow and not my keyboard.

the saddest sound in the world is a face in joy and no one to share it with.

Song of the Week

The Big Knife

part of the Great Movie Watching Challenge

From 1955, directed by Robert Aldrich, starring Ida Lupino, Jack Palance, Rod Steiger, Wendell Cory, Jean Hagen, and Shelley Winters. Whew!

The movie's based on the Broadway play by Clifford Odets, and the lead part of Charlie Castle was supposed to be played by John Garfield, who originated the part on the stage, but Garfield died before the play could be adapted to the screen.

Ida Lupino (who plays Charlie Castle's wife in the film) was pretty much miserable during filming because she was reminded too much of her good friend "Johnny" Garfield. But Jack Palance does a fine job in the role Garfield originated, and Ida's performance is filled with heartbreak and passion, so I would say they both did Garfield proud by their work in this film.

The story is about a big-time actor named Charlie Castle (formerly, Cass) who sold out his New York stage roots to find fame and fortune in Hollywood. Now the studio he's been working for wants to sign him to a fourteen year contract (basically, they're gonna own him till he's fifty) and he's got to decide whether he wants an easy living making schlocky pictures in Hollywood or a return to the legitimate theater and the life of a real artist back east.

Lupino is his estranged wife, and she wants her husband to reject the offer and be an artist again. Steiger is the maniacal studio boss who tries to bully Charlie into the contract; Cory is Steiger's sleazy right-hand man; Hagen is the wife of Charlie's friend, but she wouldn't mind a roll in those fabulous Hollywood silk sheets with old Charlie himself; and Winters is the slushy floozy who knows Charlie's secret.

Funny how a film can hit you hard when you're least expecting it.

I always thought I was one of those writers who wasn't so pretentious as to stick my nose up and look down on the "entertainment for the masses" (as the artistes so snootily call it) (and isn't it just like those snobby types to denigrate something that the average person likes! humph!). You know, those movies that come out of Hollywood (usually in the summer months) that are mostly easy, light bits of entertainment; fun and flashy but not particularly deep. I always thought I was on the side of the common man who prefers his superhero movies to those Oscar-bait snorefests the highbrows like to pump out around Christmastime. I always thought I wasn't the type to get preachy about "selling out," since selling out often means making something that a lot of people like, that brings ordinary folks a little bit of happiness and escapism and what's wrong with that? And "being true to your art" often means making some pretentious crap that only image-conscious hipster-types like. Guess what hipsters? I like comic books! I like Tolkien! I'm against the feces-flung desecration that passes for "art" in the Modern Art museums of the world!

But I'll tell you what, when I was in Hollywood, I did feel an icky sense that it was all about the money, and about the world of power and sex and fabulously rich possessions, and I feared what would happen to me if I stayed out there too long. Not that a person can't work in Hollywood and keep his integrity and morals -- there are brave souls, good, holy souls out there right now doing it for real, some of them are my friends and they can make it, they have the strength -- but I'm weak like Charlie Castle; I'm too easily tempted.

And I too longed to "get back east where they have four seasons" (a line from the film that hit me square in the gut).

So once again a movie confirms undeniable truth #17: New York is better than Los Angeles, always and forever. New York City is where the artists are. L.A. is for wealth, power, and soulless parties. The California sunshine just masks the empty ghostly figures by giving them a nice tan.

Or, at least, that's how this movie made me feel and maybe I've fallen prey to its illusion. Filmmaking, afterall, is about a certain perspective, i.e.: who's putting the camera down and where's he pointing it (and where isn't he pointing)?

This film is a New York playwright's indictment of Hollywood. Take that how you will. But it sure took me for an emotional ride and sorta made me glad I packed up and headed back east.

What's going on in my brain

I wish I knew.

Spent the whole day sick on the couch watching a marathon of Ann Sothern films on TCM. It's the centennial of her birth today.

What a dream world TCM is! You sit there all day just watching movies nobody but a film geek's ever heard of and in between the features are shorts, trailers, interviews with people who lived the Golden Age, tributes to Richardo Montalban, a movie lover's paradise.

It's weird being part of an obscure fandom like the classic movie fandom. You rarely meet a fellow member face-to-face (grandmas don't count), so you seek them out on the Internet in various soggy corners. But even then, it's not exactly what you'd call a robust online fandom. A few bloggers and a couple of dull message boards isn't really enough to get your fix, if you follow me.

It's such a lonely hobby, which I guess makes sense since it's just you sitting on your couch alone watching images flicker in the dark. But I'm the type who doesn't care much for being alone. Watching and talking about a movie with someone else is always better.

Also, I'm one of those conservative freak-types who loves movies and television and entertainment, so how come I can't seem to warm to Big Hollywood. Actually, that's not fair: I do click on it everyday and read at least one or two posts. But something's missing over there; it's not quite living up to what I wanted it to be. I can't quite put my finger on it yet, so I'm gonna hold off on too much commentary until I can figure it out. Maybe it's just that there's not enough John Nolte?

Or maybe I'm just in the midst of Internet/blogosphere fatigue. It hits me every once in awhile, where I just look around cyberspace and yell, "Say something interesting already! Something original! Stop the same tired endless echo of talking points!"

I need a drink.

"We love you, Mr. President"