She Blogged By Night

Between way too much stuff to do in real life, technical problems, and some serious, serious blog burn-out, SBBN will be going on hiatus for an as-yet undetermined amount of time. Weeks, at least. Probably months.

In the meantime, please note that I am flaking out on my promised entry for the Spirit of Ed Wood Blogathon, which is extremely shitty of me to do, but I don't really feel like I have any other option at this point. Sorry. Please, though, GO CHECK OUT THE BLOGATHON. I'm not joking, it's fucking phenomenal so far, and it's only the first day.

A little Rock Hudson beefcake to get your heart started this evening.

Sorry I've been gone so much, kids. I'm scrambling to get a lot of real life responsible stuff done and it doesn't leave much time for the blog. I hope that will change soon.

This post originally appeared on Film For the Soul during Ibetolis' amazing Counting Down the Zeroes series, a celebration of films from the 2000s. The year of 2003 was a terrific one, so much so that it was difficult to decide which film I wanted to do for the year. Eventually deciding on a list of 6 or so, I had to have Ibetolis make the final decision for me. Decisions are hard.

"A Mighty Wind" is a documentary-style chronicle of a reunion concert honoring the recently-deceased Irving Steinbloom, folk musician manager in the 50s and 60s. Three acts, all former contractees with Steinbloom, are invited to the memorial performance and are featured in the film. Through archival footage, and interviews with the players as well as experts in the field, we're given a glimpse into the life of folk musicians whose glory days are many decades behind them.

Irving's son Jonathan (Bob Balaban) organizes the concert, booking The Folksmen (Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, and Christopher Guest) first. The Folksmen are a trio which had had one hit in the early 1960s, and continued to play in concerts and TV shows of the day with some lesser but still popular tunes. McKean, Shearer, and Guest are startlingly comfortable in their roles. Of course, this trio is also responsible for aging rockers Spinal Tap, but Guest and co-writer Eugene Levy were actually in folk bands in the 1960s. Shearer's goofy baritone, McKean's handsome and toupeed front man, and Guest's overused tremolo all combine to make a really enjoyable group, one that is more novelty than standard though, which is why their single-hit status surprises no one.


Next, Jonathan signs on The New Main Street Singers, a state-fair-playing offshoot of the original Main Street Singers his father once managed. The new group is headed by Laurie and Terry Bohner (Jane Lynch and John Michael Higgins), with one of the original members (Paul Dooley) still in the band. The original Main Street Singers performed until 1971, when one of the founders left to start his own porno business. Laurie Bohner was a ukulele-playing adult film star, discovered by the former founder and recruited into The New Main Street Singers. The new group is a neuftet that, over the years, has developed into a cult led by the Bohners and their color-worshiping religion.


Finally, Steinbloom wants to book the most popular group of his father's career, the sweetheart duo Mitch & Mickey (Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara). The couple went through a bitter split decades earlier and haven't spoken since. Mickey is now remarried to a catheter salesman who enjoys toy trains and The Powerpuff Girls, and Mitch is barely holding it together after a series of rather public breakdowns. After a lot of cajoling, Mitch agrees to do the concert.

Mitch & Mickey are unquestionably the stars of this show. Mitch is bewildered, confused, perpetually stunned, and simply speaking is, for him, a true struggle. Yet Levy never overplays the character and we never laugh at Mitch because he's a broken man. O'Hara imbues Mickey with a joy and sincerity that is captivating. Early on when Mickey is first being interviewed, O'Hara has this beautiful, compelling glint in her eyes that is nearly indescribable.


In an interview, Guest said "if people see Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara as a couple, then in the next movie you don’t want to do that again." Far be it for me to tell an accomplished director that he's wrong, but... he's wrong. They were so great as a couple in "Best in Show", and their chemistry in "A Mighty Wind" was remarkable and moving. I suggest an entire series of films featuring Levy and O'Hara as a couple. They could be hippies in one film, morticians in another -- that would be a comedy, of course -- and maybe a couple of high-powered New York attorneys. Cash in on the remake craze by casting them in a new version of "Adam's Rib"! You can take those ideas for free, Mr. Guest. It's my pleasure.

Mitch & Mickey were a phenomenon, appearing on TV shows, in concerts, and releasing a series of hit songs. Their most famous song was "Kiss At the End of the Rainbow", a song which culminated in the sweethearts actually kissing as part of the act. A folk musician historian tells us that the power of that kiss in the public conscience could not be overstated. Through interviews we discover that Mitch's and Mickey's relationship began to crumble, ending during one particularly vicious fight in the recording studio. Mickey started yelling at Mitch, who snapped and completely lost it, ending up in a mental institution for a while.


We never know the catalyst of the fight, but Mitch toward the end of the film reveals that back in his heyday he would prepare for a concert by playing "find the cobra" with the motel's chambermaid. So Mickey probably had a good reason for yelling at Mitch. Ultimately, the tension in the film derives from the unspoken feelings the two still have for each other, and wondering whether Mitch & Mickey will kiss during "Kiss At the End of the Rainbow" at the reunion concert.


Christopher Guest is best when he works subtly. The players in "A Mighty Wind" approach their characters with a sincere directness that never becomes farce, never shows disdain. The moments of outlandishness are few, with characters revealing themselves as more neurotic and dysfunctional as the film goes on. Occasional wild silliness is laughed at but not lingered on, as though we were listening to an otherwise-sane friend tell one of his rare crazy stories.


Comparatively, Guest's earlier films often rely on caricature, ridiculous behavior and stereotype. His first outing, the legendary "This is Spinal Tap", had some genuine emotion involved, although Guest has made it clear he considers the film to be about a group of "over-the-top idiots". Guest also says he doesn't like the term "mockumentary" for his films because they are all intended to be reality-based and not mock anyone, although I find it hard to reconcile that thought with Guest describing the real life folk musicians he knew as "cruel", "self-important", and "jealous". Catherine O'Hara has said that while they don't intend to mock, "I know we're kidding ourselves, but it doesn't feel [like mocking] when we're doing it."

If the members of Spinal Tap aren't exactly idiots, the play participants in Guest's next film "Waiting for Guffman" certainly were. The film serves up an ensemble of over-the-top performers who engage in unbelievable hijinks. There is more than a hint of ridicule hurled at provincial, uncultured Missouri rubes who simply don't understand what real art is. His next film "Best in Show" was less about making fun of a group of people and more about a satirical insight into a world most people know little about, yet there was still a sense that the film was laughing at real-life breeders and showers, not with them.

"Fog Over Frisco" (1934):

I've waited so long to post about this one that I barely remember what the movie was about. That's okay, it's on TCM in just under a week, on July 1st at 9:45 PM.

Bette is Arlene, hard-partying step-sister to Val (Margaret Livingston. Again. Sigh.). Arlene is also girlfriend to rich dude Spenser Carlton played by blog fave Lyle Talbot. Arlene hangs around wild bars that are owned and run by gangsters, and even though Val goes with her, she doesn't realize the evil what lurks about these places, because Val is angelic and perfect and blah blah blah. They even wear color-coded gowns when they're at the club together, Val in white, Arlene in black.

While drinking and dancing at the mob-run club, the boss borrows Arlene's car and puts a stash of something stolen in her glove compartment. These turn out to be stolen securities and bonds, and Arlene, being the daughter of a famous and wealthy banker, has the ability to fence them for a cut of the profit. Boyfriend Spencer helps with the laundering -- he works in Arlene's father's bank and has connections -- but he's so worried about the scam that he refuses to do it any more.

Arlene's father (Arthur Byron) is en epic douchebag the next morning, ranting against Arlene's partying and pictures in the society notices as though she was the most immoral person in the world. He doesn't know she's fencing stolen securities, he just knows she's in the paper. As though this were some Gothic novel, he pronounces Arlene no good because her mother was no good, and threatens to commit her to an insane asylum if she's involved in even one more society page scandal. Way to keep the perspective there, gramps.


Val worries about her step-sister, but is also mad at her boyfriend, Tony (Donald Woods), who wrote some of the society articles that have her dad so upset. She basically dumps Tony because of it, and chases off Tony and his pal photographer Izzy (Hugh fucking Herbert. Again. SIGH.)

Arlene gets a phone call and runs off to meet the mob boss, but not before putting her engagement ring in an envelope and sending it back to Spencer. After Arlene meets with the mob boss, she goes to meet someone else. At the same time her dad goes to work and discovers the bond scam and calls Spencer in; he's more upset that Spencer was "manipulated" by Arlene than he is about his own daughter. Oh, he threatens to shoot Arlene, too. Nice.


Arlene meets a man at his apartment, another man who works for her father and who is demanding some scandalous love letters he sent to her back. After this meeting Arlene never arrives home. What has happened to her? Well, for once I'm not going to tell you. Watch it in a week and find out!

"Fog Over Frisco" is not a bad movie, I really kind of liked it up to about this part of the film. Of course, there is the little matter of Hugh Herbert, who is rapidly becoming my least favorite actor in the world. At least he's standing next to William Demarest much of the time, whose awesomeness somewhat negates the Hugh Factor. Margaret Lindsay is not my favorite actress, at least not when she was younger. I think she's tremendous in her character roles in the 1950s and early 60s, after she lets go of this smugness that pervades her 1930s work.

Bette is so pretty in this film, vivacious and lots of fun. Her room is a fabulously appointed affair that I tried (and failed) to get some good screencaps of. Still, two small and fuzzy screencaps are better than none:

I thought this was interesting: Today I was going through some old VHS tapes to get to some "Ultra 7" episodes I recorded in about 1995 or 1996, when I found a copy of "Victor/Victoria" I'd recorded off TCM at the same time. Did you remember that TCM used to show edited versions of films? I didn't! This notice (shown at left) appeared when "Victor/Victoria" aired, between Robert Osborne's intro to the film and the movie itself.

Again, I can't specifically date this, but the other things on the tape make me think this was about the summer of 1995. (EDIT: TV.com notes that "Ultra 7" started showing on TNT again back in 1994, meaning this movie could have been taped as early as 1994. However, we didn't get TCM on cable until it had been around for at least several months, so I'm sticking with 1995 for a date. And as a serious tangent, I'd like to point out that an Internet friend of mine started a write-in campaign to get TNT to show "Ultra 7" and I participated, so I'd like to think I was part of the reason they showed the reruns. Ha!)

What's interesting is that someone who claimed to work for TCM posted to Usenet at around the same time, i.e. the mid-1990s, I think to alt.movies.silent -- these posts aren't archived, this was in the days before Deja News or Google Groups -- and they insisted movies weren't shown edited. Any time an edited print was shown, they said, it was a case of the wrong print being shown and not a case of editing.

I've heard this since then so, even if this was someone just pretending to be a TCM employee, it's obvious that TCM's policy now is to show unedited copies of films. And as I've mentioned before, TCM back in the mid-1990s once showed a half-edited print of "Rich and Famous" which had to have been an error. Why else edit some profanity but not all?

But this intro warning shows that TCM once did show edited prints on purpose, for "content". How odd.

And because I felt like it, here is a really bad screencap of Bob on the outro to this showing of "Victor/Victoria". It was a 14-ish year old VHS tape, recorded on the worst quality possible, so this was the best I could do.

Sometimes I'm not good at memes. I like memes, don't get me wrong, and I'm in the middle of composing a post for a meme that I wasn't even specifically tagged for. The other day, though, shahn at the wonderful sixmartinis and the seventh art tagged me for the Reading the Movies meme. It's a good meme. I wanted to participate. I just don't read many books, and don't have 10 books that I can make a list from.

There are a lot of reasons for this, the main reason being that nowadays I only read for pleasure, and I really get very little pleasure from film books. You don't want to hear me go off on some books I read within the last year, which were all either unsubstantiated gossip or judgmental attack pieces. I do a lot of research, though, online and off, but that rarely involves reading an entire book. So, with apologies, I'm going to have to pass on this meme.

I do have a couple of other memes and a few blogathons I'll be participating in, though, and a couple more projects I'll be unveiling as well. This is probably as good a time as any to mention that the longer summary posts I like to do (like "Red Rock West" or "The Locked Door") will most likely be on hold for a while. This is disappointing but necessary since my laptop is broken until I can afford to fix it, and my screencaps without the laptop (like here in "Bordertown") aren't nearly as good as with. The projects that I'm working on, though, look like a lot of fun. For me, maybe not you. Ha!

Lest we forget, El Brendel is the SBBN official mascot. Today's photo is from "If I Had My Way". El is allegedly looking at a puppy, but his eyes are focused elsewhere. Perhaps a Twinkie (tm) is just out of camera range? A delicious, savory Twinkie.

Here's a huge post of Dorothy Sebastian pics to end this unintentional but fun 2-week-long homage to the beautiful actress:


A larger, uncropped version is here.



A larger version is here.



Again, a larger version is here. She's missing a pearl! See if you can find where!



Look at that stove! Was that gas? My grandparents got married in 1925 and their brand new wedding present stove was still wood-burning. It looked a lot like this stove, which is why I saved the pic in the first place.



A still from a film, I would assume, but there's no still code and I have no idea what she's even wearing. Is it Native American? Asian? Spanish?



A Hurrell portrait of Dorothy.

Just a reminder: "Cabin in the Cotton" will be on TCM this Sunday morning (late Saturday night), June 7 at 4:30 AM Eastern time. You know I couldn't resist telling you all when you could see the Barthlemess Stare for yourselves.

A lot of you said you wanted to see "Fashions of 1934", so you'll be glad to know it's also on next month, on July 29th at 1:00 AM Eastern.

One other hard-to-find Bette movie will be on TCM soon as well: "Fog Over Frisco" July 1, 9:45 PM Eastern. I've already watched this one for my Bette Davis Project, and it's not a half bad film, but it of course needs more Bette.

July is a big Bette month on TCM, and August 8th (Bette's birthday) is all Bette all the time.

This odd photo of Bette in a strange dress with a look that seems to say she's daydreaming about smacking some WB executive around is, I think, from "Housewife". It certainly resembles a scene from the film, so "Housewife" is my official guess.

Look at those eyes!

I've been derelict in my Dorothy Sebastian duties for a few days, but I promise to make it up to you.

I was once again charmed with the opportunity to participate in StinkyLulu's excellent Supporting Actress Smackdown series, and this year was a great one: 1992. Don't remember it off the top of your head? Two words: Marisa Tomei. You have to go read the comments and reviews on StinkyLulu's post! This is one of the best entries in an always-outstanding series. Alex's video is great, too, as always. So stop reading here and go there!

So, for good or ill (probably ill) I have some theories about why Tomei won in 1992. And these theories don't involve a drunken Jack Palance.

As Stinkylulu said, it's surprising that Tomei was nominated, but not surprising she won. I completely agree, and I think that is the most apt thing anyone has ever said about this controversial win. I can't tell you why she was nominated. I have no clue. But when looking at the other nominees, it seems as though most of them had a "reason" for losing. "Reason" is in quotes because I don't think the Oscars have ever been about performances alone, they've been about image and politics and favorites, and the reasoning behind half of their awards eludes me to the point that I sometimes think there was no reason at all.

Joan Plowright in "Enchanted April" gave a good performance, but this was a pretty light film that started out as a made-for-TV film in the UK. The Academy hates the stink of television on their precious movies. Plowright was never going to win.

Judy Davis in "Husbands and Wives" gave a terrific performance, but she was nominated in a film that rather uncomfortably recalled Allen's own current scandal involving Farrow's very young adopted daughter. The voters probably avoided voting for Allen simply out of principle; recall that Elizabeth Taylor didn't win for "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" because of the Eddie Fisher scandal.

Miranda Richardson in "Damage" was great, but it was a small part and she was partly miscast by being so obviously too young for the role. She was huge in 1992 but I can see the Academy thinking she was overexposed. Plus, "Damage" was originally NC-17 for all the boring sex scenes and, honestly, it's a big ol' plodding snooze of a film. Richardson would have won, but never ever ever for "Damage".

So that leaves Tomei and Vanessa Redgrave in "Howard's End". It's a bit of a problem. Redgrave's role was tailor made for a Supporting Actress Oscar, it's a lovely performance in a surprising movie, but I think perhaps it's a little too perfect. Redgrave had already won an Oscar before, she's been controversial her entire career (and once used the Academy Awards to make her own political statement, which they hate), plus the Academy always favors the Americans over actors from other countries. It really must have been a toss-up between Redgrave and Tomei, and a fresh-faced, cute, likable Tomei surely seemed like a shoe-in for Academy members who cringed at the thought of a British actress or a Woody Allen film winning anything.

Let me say, though, that I think Tomei is a fine actress. I first realized this when I saw "Four Rooms" of all things - this woman is a professional. She may not have deserved the Oscar for "My Cousin Vinny", but she is definitely an Oscar-calibre actress.