Quote of the Day

Everybody say thank you to Interview Magazine today because they got Tony nominees Mia Farrow and Cole Escola to chat with each other and you've got to go read it right now -- I promise you it's a gay movie nerd's slice of heaven. Cole's a Classic Hollywood nerd of course and they get Mia to dish all sorts of stories from her storied Hollywood past hanging with Bette Davis, George Cukor, and in the best passage of their chat an incredibly strange and hilarious series of happenings with Joan Crawford which I must share in full...

FARROW: You’re a real movie buff. Are you seeing enough big emotions in movies these days?

ESCOLA: No, I like melodrama and high stakes that maybe don’t make sense. Silent movies, I find particularly moving right now. Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid or even Joan Crawford in Dancing Daughters.

FARROW: She’s scary. And she was scary in person as well.

ESCOLA: Oh, did you meet her?

FARROW: Yes. I more than met her. I forget what movie was shooting, probably that one with Betty Davis, the scary one. 

ESCOLA: Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? 

FARROW: If that was shot at Fox, then that was what they were shooting. And for whatever reason, she started sending a whole refrigerator of Pepsi Cola for my trailer ’cause I was in a TV series called Peyton Place. I don’t particularly like Pepsi Cola, but a lot of Pepsi Cola kept coming to my trailer, more than anyone would ever want. And then she came over to see me and I got a strange vibe from her. So I’m back in New York, and she knew my mother. I hung up people’s coats for my mom when they came into the house. And I hung her coat and out falls a flask of alcohol. She grabbed it like that, and she put it in her handbag. She drank quite a lot. Then she invited me to her apartment. I thought it was a party, but I arrived, and I was the only one there. 

ESCOLA: In New York? 

FARROW: Yes. I was 17, and everything was green in her apartment. It just had very low lighting. And there were no other guests, just Ms. Crawford and me. And I just wasn’t very comfortable. 

ESCOLA: Of course. 

FARROW: So I just made up a lie that I wasn’t feeling very well and I didn’t want to give her any diseases. I think I said the word “diseases” as I walked out of the room. I was scared of Ms. Crawford.

Do we think Joan was coming on to baby Mia? I've heard many a bisexual rumor about Joan before and this feels like Joan was hot for the little girl. I laughed so hard at Mia saying "I think I said the word 'diseases' as I walked out of the room" lol. What a life. 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Death on the Nile (1978)

Mrs. Van Schuyler: Keep a civil tongue in your 

head, Bowers, or you'll be out of a job.

Miss Bowers: What do I care? This town is filled with 

rich old widows willing to pay for a little groveling 

and a body massage. You go ahead and fire me.

A "body massage" wink wink. I've always found Death on the Nile to be a bit of a snooze (except for hot-ass Simon MacCorkindale of course) but man alive does having a movie with Bette Davis & Maggie Smith play lesbian-coded rule. Mggie in that tux! Anyway a happy birthday to Bette today! The queen was gifted to us 116 years ago. Bow down!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from::

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

Jane: You know, we're right back where we started.

When I was on the stage you had to depend on me

for everything. Even the food you ate came from me.

Now you have to depend on me for your food again.

So, you see, we're right back where we started.

Blanche: Why are you doing this to me? Why?

Jane: Doing what?

Blanche: Making me afraid to eat.

Trying to make me starve myself.

Jane: Don't be silly. If you starve you die.

Bette Davis was born 115 years ago today! I was going to call her 'the legend Bette Davis" but "legend" doesn't even seem adequate for Bette fucking Davis, ya know? She's so beyond mere "legend." Bette Davis has truly ascended into the heavens and stands beside Zeus and Mickey Mouse. Anyway in a very strange coincidence I got myself a brand new Bette Davis poster in the mail this very morning! Do y'all know the artist who goes by ElvisDead? This is their website here -- I became obsessed with their movie-poster work thanks to their truly terrifying Night of the Living Dead poster (see that here), and so the second it was on sale I snatched up a copy of the Baby Jane poster, which I will now share with you:

Fucking killer right? I am obsessed. I unwrapped that beauty from the tube before coming to work this morning and it's even better in person. It looks like she's reaching right for you! That bitch is going right over my bed! Happy birthday, Bette!

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1952

Here, a treat for your Monday -- now that I've got a break from the film fest stuff I'm diving back into trying to finish off my "Siri Says" series! The last one we did was back in April when I finished off the 1930s -- indeed we're getting perilously close to finishing this series, as I think we've got about ten years out of one hundred left to survey? In case you're new round these parts or just need a refresher this series is where I ask my iPhone to pick a number between one and one hundred, and then I give y'all my five favorite films from the year that corresponds to the number given. So for example today the number we've got is "52" and I will be giving you my favorite five films from the Movies of 1952. 

Funny enough I'm not finishing off the 50s this time -- I have at least one more year to go until I do -- which makes me kind of sad, as the 1950s are a pain in my ass. I don't love the 1950s to be honest! I've probably complained about this previously one of these times but it's all Noir and Musicals and big bloated Technicolor literary adaptations and it's just not my cuppa. I barely scavenged up this episode's top five and I mostly only like these films, as opposed to loving any (except the first one, which I deeply adore). But hey these are all turning 70 this year, I suppose that's of interest! And with that ringing endorsement I give you...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1952

Ikiru

(dir. Akira Kurosawa)

-- released on October 9th 1952 --

High Noon

(dir. Fred Zinnemann)

-- released on July 24th 1952 --

Singin' in the Rain

(dir. Stanley Donen)

-- released on March 27th 1952 --

Clash By Night

(dir. Fritz Lang)

-- released on May 28th 1952 --

Don't Bother to Knock

(dir. Roy Ward Baker)

-- released on July 18th 1952 --

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Runners-up: The Quiet Man (dir. John Ford), The Narrow Margin (dir. Richard Fleischer), The Star (dir. Stuart Heisler), Monkey Business (dir. Howard Hawks), The Marrying Kind (dir. George Cukor), Pat & Mike (dir. Cukor)

Never seen: The Greatest Show on Earth (dir. Cecil B DeMille), The Bad and the Beautiful (dir. Vincente Minnelli), Umberto D (dir. Vittorio De Sica), Othello (dir. Welles), Forbidden Games (dir. René Clément), The Importance of Being Earnest (dir. Anthony Asquith), Sudden Fear (dir. David Miller)

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What are your favorite movies of 1952?

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1937

Well I wasn't planning on doing one of my "Siri Says" posts today but I am the poisonous combination of being both dullard-minded and bored to boot this afternoon, and this is a good way to kill an hour plus -- wowza am I ever selling it today! You're welcome! Anyway today's pick ended up being "37" and so we'll be talking the Movies of 1937. Which well first things first it turns out this is the last year of the 1930s that I had left! So, as we do whenever we finish a decade, here are links to all of the 1930s...

Here are my favorite movies of 1930

Here are my favorite movies of 1931

Here are my favorite movies of 1932

Here are my favorite movies of 1933

Here are my favorite movies of 1934

Here are my favorite movies of 1935

Here are my favorite movies of 1936

Here are my favorite movies of 1938

Here are my favorite movies of 1939

Lots of fun to be had up in there, as the 1930s are obviously a killer decades for the movies -- indeed going though the movies of 1937 I have to admit that I was kind of shocked by how few 1937 movies I have seen? I'm pretty good with the 30s in general, but for some reason this year in particular is a big fat void nothingburger. I'll be curious to hear what movies y'all dig from it, because I got not a lot! The enthusiasm of this post, from start to finish, it's really something right? It's just that kind of day. On that note...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1937

The Awful Truth

(dir. Leo McCarey)

-- released on October 21st 1937 --

Nothing Sacred

(dir. William A. Wellman)

-- released on November 25th 1937 --

Stella Dallas

(dir. King Vidor)

-- released on August 5th 1937 --

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

(dir. David Hand, etc.)

-- released on December 21st 1937 --

Make Way For Tomorrow

(dir. Leo McCarey)

-- released on April 30th 1937 --

-----------------------------------------------

Never seen: Easy Living (dir. Mitchell Leisen), Topper (dir. Norman Z. McLeod), Lost Horizon (dir. Frank Capra), Captain Courageous (dir. Victor Fleming), The Life of Emile Zola (dir. William Dieterle), Marked Woman (dir. Lloyd Bacon)

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What are your favorite movies of 1937?

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1935

This post hasn't even begun and I have lied to you. LIED. I don't know how we recuperate from this violence, but maybe me spilling the beans will help. You see normally when I do my "Siri Says" series I ask my telephone to choose a number between 1 and 100, and then I give me my five favorite movies from the year that corresponds with the number. That's you, know, kinda the entire idea behind the series. But when I took stock of the archives of this series back in January I realized that I only had 14 out of 100 years left, and to be quite honest it would have taken Siri half an hour at them odds to come up with a fresh number. So I didn't ask Siri! What I did was write the 14 remaining years down on slips of paper and choose the year from that. See?

At least this much is true! I never could have just written "1935" on a random slip of paper or anything -- that would be the work of a crazy person, and you're obviously, hehe, in the hands of the entirely sane here. Only a sane person would spend two paragraphs and what, a good minute of everybody's lives, detailing all of this in minute detail. So yes, the Movies of 1935 is where we're resting our heads this Monday afternoon, and... meh? Not the greatest year for the movies, save stone-cold masterpiece (the first one in my list below) and several solid-enough flicks after that. Tons of very serious literary adaptations this year (David Copperfield, Anna Karenina, A Tale of Two Cities, Crime and Punishment, Peter Ibbetson, A Midsummer Night's Dream) that feel a little musty now. But I dug up some good stuff...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1935

The Bride of Frankenstein

(dir. James Whale)

-- released on April 19th 1935 --

Captain Blood

(dir. Michael Curtiz)

-- released on December 19th 1935 --

Mad Love

(dir. Karl Freund)

-- released on July 12th 1935 --

The 39 Steps

(dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

-- released on July 31st 1935 --

The Devil is a Woman

(dir. Josef von Sternberg)

-- released on March 15th 1935 --

-----------------------------------------

Runners-up: Top Hat (dir. Mark Sandrich), Mutiny on the Bounty (dir. Frank Lloyd), The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (dir. Henry Hathaway), Triumph of the Will (dir. Leni Riefenstahl), The Raven (dir. Louis Friedlander), The Call of the Wild (dir. William A. Wellman), Magnificent Obsession (dir. John M. Stahl), Mark of the Vampire (dir. Tod Browning), Anna Karenina (dir. Clarence Brown) 

Never seen: David Copperfield (dir. George Cukor), The Wedding Night (dir. King Vidor), Roberta (dir. William A. Seiter), The Informer (dir. John Ford), Alice Adams (dir. George Stevens), Peter Ibbetson (dir. Hathaway), Annie Oakley (dir. Stevens), Dangerous (dir. Alfred E. Green), Sylvia Scarlett (dir. Cukor), Toni (dir. Jean Renoir), An Inn in Tokyo (dir. Ozu) 

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What are your favorite movies of 1935?

5 Off My Head: Viva Lange!

Today we celebrate the 72nd birthday of the legend Jessica Lange! The two-time Oscar winner -- she's actually just one "G" short of being EGOT; can we count a Golden Globe in that spot instead? -- has largely been working on the stage (she was so good in Long Day's Journey Into Night, you guys) and on her photography (and she's real good at that too!) for the past decade, but she still finds time to pop up in a Ryan Murphy series here and there, always gifting us gold like this gif:

I hope she works more; I see there's no future projects lined up on her IMDb this morning, which is infuriating if it's not by choice (and with her it could be by choice) -- imagine being able to write and direct movies and not making them star vehicles for Jessica fucking Lange while you still can! Martin Scorsese's off there jerking it in some field when he knows what she's capable of directly. I'll never understand it. Never. So I'm choosing to believe she's just picky and interested in other things. The alternatives are too gruesome. Anyway we'll celebrate her today anyway, with a list of favorite roles, with one caveat -- there's a lot of her stuff I've never seen still! I dole her out in small doses, keeping in mind there are finite resources at hand. 

My 5 Favorite Jessica Lange Performances

Big Edie, Grey Gardens

Leigh Bowden, Cape Fear

(see my write-up of this performance here)

Julie, Tootsie

Frances Farmer, Frances

Joan Crawford, Feud: Bette and Joan

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Runners-up: All That Jazz, 

A Thousand Acres, King Kong

All her work on American Horror Story

Never seen: Blue Sky, Country, Titus, 

Crimes of the Heart, Losing Isaiah 

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What are your favorite Jessica Lange performances?

13 Rats of Halloween #6

Instead of listing down the "13 Rats of Halloween" for this October's festivities I totally could've counted down the "13 Rats of John Waters Movies" because if there's one filmmaker who's gladly aligned himself with this city scourge it's our dear ol' Pope of Puke himself from Baltimore, MD. Whether it's the rats fucking over his title card in Pecker seen above -- and you should listen to John talk about filming that sequence on Seth Myers show, it's very funny...

... or whether it's Donna Dasher (Mary Vivian Pierce) 

being terrified of Divine's neighborhood in Female Trouble...

... John Waters always found a moment or two for the lil' nibblers that could. Indeed as mentioned earlier in this list it was him who introduced me to the film Of Unknown Origin -- he personally screened it here in New York a few years back. But probably the most iconic John Waters Rat Moment comes from his 1977 film Desperate Living...

... which placed a cooked rat on a fancy china plate on both its original poster (which was rejected for print by the New York Times) and in its opening credits. This was obviously a shout-out to the iconic moment in the film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane which we talked about just yesterday, where Bette Davis serves a rat's corpse to Joan Crawford for dinner, much to Joan's horror. But John, being John, takes it all the way and actually shows someone cutting up and eating the rat over those opening credits. Which you can watch right here!

13 Rats of Halloween #5

"Oh Blanche. You know we've got rats in the cellar?"

Listen. We all agree that Bette Davis is amazing in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane. "Amazing" doesn't even seem a good, big enough word for what Bette Davis is in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane. But we really overlook too often Joan Crawford performance as Sister Blanche, if you ask me, and this scene provides one of my favorite bits of acting in the entire movie. After Jane says the line about "rats in the cellar" and leaves the room Blanche is left there to stare at her covered dish of dinner that Blanche dropped off at the same time. Crawford is tasked with, without really saying anything (save an under-the-breath whispered, "No..."), communicating to us the audience the connection between that line about the rats and her food dish, the ridiculousness of that connection, the horror and total revulsion that there might be a connection -- a million little unspoken beats and Joan knocks that shit out, yo...

I always go into this movie on Bette Davis' side, because I have been trained by life to always be on Bette Davis' side. But I always nevertheless end up feeling terrible for Blanche because of how damn good Joan Crawford is. I mean... it's hard not to get a little enjoyment out of seeing Mommie Dearest be tormented...

... but Joan always ends up making me feel a little guilty 

for those inclinations by right about this point in the movie. 

There were several admirable facets to Ryan Murphy's series Bette & Joan but one of its best was its window into Joan Crawford's anxieties and insecurities which had turned her into such a hardened character, and the light it shone on her as also a victim of bullying -- Bette Davis sure weren't no saint, and no doubt Joan felt as trapped as Blanche here does in that chair, in this film which was supposed to have its stars on equal footing but which was clearly being stolen from her right before her eyes. But Joan made the most of her straight-man role and gave a terrific performance, and the film wouldn't be considered the classic it is today without her.