Review of Synechdoche, New York

My review of Charlie Kauffman's excellent film SYNECHDOCHE, NEW YORK is up now at Cinefanastique Online. This is my first review for this long-standing magazine devoted to horror cinema. I pitched the idea of SYNECHDOCHE as a horror film, which it was originally meant to be. I'm happy to be published in this fine mag and am glad to see them going strong on the web.

Witches on TV! Again!

Variety.com reports that ABC is developing the John Updike novel (or, more likely, the schlocky film somewhat based on it) for television, with Maggie Friedman of Dawson's Creek as head writer.

My main problem with the film is that, first of all, the main characters were made far more glamorous than their portrayal in the novel. Sukie, Jane and Alexandra were played by Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon and Cher, respectively. This took away from the significant issues of competition and sexual viability these women-approaching-middle-age were feeling. Alex was meant to be considerably overweight, for example, and, in the novel, envied Jane's and Sukie's thinness. The competition among them was so fierce, in fact, that the three witches decide to create a spell to kill a young woman who steals the object of their affection from them (Daryl Van Horne, played with delicious devilry by Jack Nicholson). That's the other very important plot point left out: the decision to perform an act of magic that amounts to murder. The sequel novel, The Widows of Eastwick, begins with the idea that the guilt over this murder (performed fifteen years earlier) is still very much alive in Alexandra, at least (I have only read 22 pages or so).

I am an eager to finish reading it, although I highly doubt a film version will be made about older, unglamorous witches. I always hoped someone else would try this again for the large or small screen and deal with the story in a more faithful and this more interesting way. I think it would work in an arthouse kind of way.

Why can't Hollywood engage a complex, realistic novel in a complex, realistic way?

Satanists on TV!

The previews for next week's new episode of NCIS show an episode dealing with satanism and the occult, complete with one victim who has a huge pentagram tattooed on his back. Because this show is both smart and funny, I hope they'll deal with this topic in a less offensive way than The Mentalist did last week. Check out the controversy over that on the Wild Hunt Blog.

Cinefantastique is now online!

Thanks to John Morehead for making me aware of this. I am very excited to be able to access this excellent resource for cinema buffs and academics alike. There is a section of archived articles I am practicaly drooling over!

The classic mag for all things cinema in the realms of horror, fantasy, sci-fi and weird, now lives online here. Make sure you link to it! This magazine has published some wonderful articles over the years, including a lengthy and definitive one on The Wicker Man that can be found in its entirety here--you're welcome.

John Boorman speaks!

It was wonderful to meet filmmaker John Boorman, who accepted the 2008 Excellence Award form the Boston Irish Film Festival this evening, in recognition of his achievements in cinema. Boorman made some brief remarks after the screening of his stunning film The General, and then answered questions from the audience. I had spoken with him briefly earlier, and even got him to sign my two souvenir items: the book John Boorman by film critic and scholar Michel Ciment, and a copy of a shooting script of Excalibur that I bought at least ten years ago in a bookstore in Harvard Square.

I didn't think I'd end up with any chance to do an actual interview, because t was already getting late, so decided to ask about the one film left out of the tribute clips shown: The Exorcist 2: The Heretic. When I mentioned it a couple of people in the audience laughed (rude!) and Boorman at first said "Oh, yes, we left that one out, didn't we?" as if he had not at first noticed it missing from the clips and introductory remarks. He then talked about how he had first been offered the chance to direct the first Exorcist film, but being committed to working n Deliverance made it difficult, and as well, he found the subject matter "quite horrifying: as the father of a number of daughters,I thought this was primarily about the torture of a child." He then said he later read a three-page treatment for The Heretic, based on the work of Teilhard de Chardin, and the central theme was the notion of goodness. He then said doing the film in the way he did ended up being "a terrible mistake" because audiences simply "wanted more of the same" and expected a sequel to be just like the original. He said audiences were "shouting and throwing things at the screen." In spite of this, Boorman said, "It's a good film and certainly it is some of my best work, I think." He then said that so much of what makes for success in film is "hitting the audience at the right time with the right film, it has to be in the zeitgeist of getting it right." He then mentioned that Point Blank did not do wel with American audiences until it was re-released two years after its first premiere, and insisted its success the second time was purely because of timing. "If you're ahead of the audience, you're all right, but if you're ahead of them it doesn't work."

There were some other interesting questions and answers. One man asked why The General was filmed in black and white. Boorman talked of an idea I often discuss in my classes: that the act of watching cinema is like being in a dream state. "Cinema is like dreaming, and we tend to dream in black and white (not me, John! in fact the night after this conversation I had a vivid dream in which I was wearing a rainbow colored gown). If you use black and white you can create a contiguous world that is much more powerful that portraying it in color. But I regret that it's not always possible to make black and white films these days. You can't sell them to television, because TV simply doesn't ant to show newer films that are in black and white,which cuts off your revenues and this makes it very hard selling distributors on the idea. I don't know why this is, it turns people away somehow, perhaps they think it's old or old-fashioned."

(There were more questions from the audience, and answers, including some fascinating comments on film versus video, which I will transcribe in when I have more time later.)

A bit later, when I had a moment to speak again to Mr. Boorman directly, I asked him about color in Excalibur, to which he replied: "We wanted a luminous quality for the entire film, and so we lit everything. Al the forest scenes in particular, we lit with green light, the rocks, the moss on the trees, everything." I asked why green? Was it about nature, or some fairy or magical meaning? He said this was "to underscore the importance and power of nature." A man near us was interested in this subject and brought up other colors (red,etc.) and I mentioned my theory of how each character has a unique color and element palette. I discuss this a bit in my film notes for the Brattle Theatre, where is showing again this Sunday.

It was a thrill to meet Mr. Boorman and hear his commentary. You all can have this same opportunity this evening, when the director will be present at the Harvard Film Archive for the screening of his excellent, controversial film Hell in the Pacific.

John Boorman coming to Boston

Filmmaker John Boorman will be honored with the Excellence Award at this year's Boston Irish Film Festival. The festival runs from November 13-24 at the Brattle Theatre and the Harvard Film Archive.

We plan to explore some of Boorman's films in The Celluloid Bough; namely Excalibur and Exorcist 2: The Heretic. I have requested the opportunity tointerview Boorman when he is here but his publicists tell ne he is tryong to avoid ding too many interviews; he had agreed to two, has ended up committing to three and mine would be a fourth. Fingers crossed he will wish to be interviewed for our book! The other interviews are, I imagine, for newspapers: mere ephemera!

Mr. Boorman's work stands out as some of the finest in contemporary British cinema. His artistry and skill have been somewhat undersung, I feel. Michel Ciment's book is a fine and fascinating exploration of Boorman's earlist films, through The Emerald Forest.

Why Rob Zombie's Halloween is the Best Halloween

I rewatched Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween (now available in an unrated cut on DVD) and was once again stunned at what a gorgeous film it is. The first time I saw it, I thought it left too many things unanswered (why did this child who exploded in rage one day decide to suddenly stop speaking and stay silent for over a decade?). But I realized Zombie did go much further than any of the other films in the franchise in trying to offer at least some background on this compelling character, one of the scariest killers in horror cinema.

The film's casting is first rate, and the wonderful tongue-in-cheek choices of character actors who have played killers themselves (Malcolm McDowell, Brad Dourif, Udo Kier, Clint Howard, etc.) is a touch of genius, and Zombie faves like William Forsythe, his wife Sheri Moon Zombie (wonderful as Michael's imperfect but loving mother) and Ken Foree add their considerable talents even to small roles. But perhaps the shining star here is young Daeg Faerch who plays Michael Myers at age 10. Cherubic and world-weary, he is entirely believable as a child whose abuse at the hands of bullies causes him to snap.

Perhaps Zombie's finest achievement in this film is in the moods it captures. The photography (by the excellent Phil Parmet, who Zombie also worked with on House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects) and art direction (by T. K. KIrkpatrick) create a suburban community in the grip of Halloween circa 1978 and the present. The small details are mundane but atmospheric: all the pumpkins, the autumn foliage, the middle class houses and ramshackle bungalows. When we see an affluent neighborhood that looks strangely deserted during the killing sprees, the total silence that immediately ensues behind heavy wooden doors slammed shut, we understand the safety of such neighborhoods is really just a form of isolation. The final sequence, when Laurie (Scout Taylor-Compton) is scrambling deeper and deeper into the old house, trying to escape Michael Myers by squirming into holes and breaking through rotting walls, is terrifying and entirely plausible. Zombie is a thorough director who makes sense out of sequences of events, a skill lacking in much of modern horror direction.

Zombie succeeds as a director where earlier ones have failed; some of the previous versions (like Halloween 4) leave big chunks of narrative out, with characters going from being attacked to being outdoors, and talking about how they were "drugged"--huh? by whom? and ow long were you out? and what happened while you were unconscious? He follows character actions through to their logical conclusions. He also manages to fill in narrative information with effective visual shorthand (Michael's obsession with masks is particularly well handled). And if we are no closer to understanding why Michael Myers is an unrepentant killer, we are at least closer to understanding how the suburbs can easily produce monsters.