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| Richard Nixon goes all Clockwork Orange in the comedy Richard. |
The articles I’ve posted over there since I last wrote about it here are eight in number and do reflect the different types of items I’ve featured on the Funhouse TV show over the years. The main page of the Substack can be found here — and I would be remiss if I didn't mention at the very beginning here that the whole enterprise is free!
It’s appropriate to start with a piece I wrote about being “bootlegged” — a polite phrase for the experience of having the Tura Satana doc-makers use (lean on, actually, since there is apparently not much footage of Tura in her old age talking about her career) parts of my on-camera interview with Tura.
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| My time with Tura, appropriated by the doc-makers. |
The filmmakers evidently felt that “public access=public domain,” so there was no reason for them to: a.) contact and license the footage from the person who owns it; b.) get a decent copy, instead of a low-rest copy one of the producers downloaded as a .mov file from a Mac blog I had around the turn of the century. The doc repeats its imagery over and over, and depends on talking heads to praise Tura endlessly (which is nice — she was lovely to me) but also to perpetuate some of her “legends,” which might be true, could be true, but are most likely nicely embroidered fabrications.
The “bootlegged” piece can be found here.
Next up is a short tribute to the great Alexander Kluge whom I interviewed on the show back in October 2016. He died in March of this year, and I wanted to acknowledge the wonderful chat I had with him — sure, it looks insanely dark (*now* I have the proper lighting rig, but I didn’t back then), but the content is top-notch.
Along with clips from each of the three episodes I created using the interview with Kluge, I include an example of the short-short stories he produced a great number of in his final years. The guy was a polymath for whom filmmaking was only one creative outlet.
The article on Kluge can be found here.
I reviewed an off-Broadway play about Lenny Bruce’s NYC obscenity trial. Some aspects of the show were good, and others were decidedly off-kilter.
The review can be found here.
Sometimes you wait years to see a particular film and it turn out to be underwhelming. Such is the case with Richard, Harry Hurwitz’s Nixon comedy that interweaves actors playing out Tricky Dick’s life and newsreel footage of the real Nixon. A strange mixture that falls flat more often than it amuses.
My notes on Richard can be found here.
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| Buffalo Bill and the Indians. |
To celebrate the 250th birthday of the U.S.A., I chose to rewatch Robert Altman’s dissection of America, Buffalo Bill and the Indians (released less than two weeks before the Bicentennial). It’s a brilliant reflection on American history and celebrity, and how facts don’t matter when you’re telling a colorful (completely fake) story.
The piece on Buffalo Bill is here.
A short piece on the goofy mistakes that AI can make, spotlighting Gemini AI’s telling me that I don’t host/produce Media Funhouse and that George Carlin was Hispanic (!).
AI makes dumb, sloppy mistakes.
I reviewed Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s The Samurai and the Prisoner, a period drama-mystery that has interesting ties to the undistributed-in-the-U.S. (but seen on the Funhouse TV show) Takeshi Kitano film Kubi.
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| The prisoner (left) and the samurai. |
The review of Samurai can be found here.
Thoughts on the Fassbinder satire The Third Generation (1979), a densely layered film that reflects on how corporate chieftains love terrorists, because terrorist activity causes oligarchs to pressure their friends in government to crack down even more on the average citizen. (Plus, Hanna Schygulla and Udo Kier in carnival oufits!)
The Third Generation piece is here.
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| Tagline: "I don't throw bombs. I make films. --RWF" |
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