'Gabo' and 'Shaki' – Gabriel Garcia Marquez's friendship with Shakira

The death of a master storyteller like Gabriel Garcia Marquez makes us think of the stories of his we've read, the ones we've neglected, and the impact a writer can have on our lives. I deeply loved 100 Years of Solitude when I read it many years ago, prolonging the reading of the book just so the damned thing wouldn't end. I need to return to his work as a reader, but in the meantime wanted to salute him by discussing his friendship with another one of Colombia's best good-will ambassadors.

Back in the summer of 2001, several months before her first English-language album came out, I did a tribute on the Funhouse TV show to several Latin singers whose work I loved, including Shakira. She is of course now an international superstar, but at that time she was a dark-haired Latin-Arabic beauty who wrote songs that were both incredibly catchy and which had an emotional and occasionally political resonance.

Much was made at the time about Shakira's IQ being very high, that she had a sharp, eclectic musical taste, and was able to speak eloquently about matters that pop stars veer away from (this is all still true today – only less emphasized in the American market, since we in the U.S. sadly prize the lowest-common denominator). The single event that crystallized just how serious Shakira could taken was the fact that Garcia Marquez liked her music and profiled her in 1999 for the Spanish-language magazine Cambio. 

I have been unable to find that particular article online in either Spanish or English, but did come across this quote from it: “Shakira’s music has a personal stamp that no one else has and no one can sing and dance like she does, at whatever age, with such an innocent sensuality, one that seems to be of her own invention.” Wonderful praise from one artist to another.

Three years later, on June 7, 2002, this article appeared in The Guardian. It's a chatty and informal piece by Garcia Marquez that profiles Shakira; I'm not certain if it's a reworking/updating of the '99 piece, or something he did that was entirely new. In any case, it offers a fully-rounded portrait of the young star as she was making a splash literally around the world:

“Of the money she's earned, she says: 'It's more than I admit to and less than people think.' Her favourite place to listen to music is in a car, full blast, with the windows rolled up so it doesn't bother anybody else. 'It's the ideal place to talk to God, to talk to myself, to try to understand.' She hates television. She says that her biggest contradiction is her belief in eternal life and her unbearable terror of death."

Throughout the years, the two continued to encounter each other, but rarely in their native country. Garcia Marquez attended a Mexico City concert by Shakira in 2006. A TV news account of the meeting was broadcast in which there was only a few seconds of footage of the two together.

What the news organization did was dig up file footage of Garcia Marquez dancing at some other function (possibly years earlier) and the not-paying-attention Vulture blog declared it to be “Garcia Marquez dancing with Shakira.” This is interesting, in that their source was the Jezebel site, which merely described it as “Garcia Marquez shaking it to Shakira” (which is still not accurate, since they're not playing her music in the dance clip, but at least it's not as misleading as the Vulture headline).

Anyway, dig the guy's moves. He was *not* adverse to cutting a rug in between spinning magical realist fables:

I looked online for clips of Garcia Marquez interviews that are subtitled in English and found that there are precious few of those (at this moment). Below is the start of a documentary about him that is well-subtitled (and narrated by a posh British voice).

If you're more into the hardcore (and are bilingual), you could always listen to the full 100 Years... Spanish audio book online – which runs nearly twelve hours! The book is actually epic in scope, but not that much in length – the fascinating thing is that the mighty GGM was a more succinct and disciplined writer than the American school of “throw it all in, I'm as good as Tolstoy or Joyce!” fiction.

According to articles online, Garcia Marquez asked Shakira to contribute songs to the soundtrack of the film adaptation of his novel Love in the Time of Cholera. This is one she didn't write, a bolero called “Hay Amores”:

Finally, a bit of the music that Garcia Marquez was so impressed by. Here is the title track to Shakira's second “adult” album (she discounts two early efforts she released as a teen telenovela actress). The title of the 1998 album and song, “Donde estan los ladrones?” refers to the corruption in Colombian government.

The final two verses in English are: “They have seen them kneeling/sitting or crouching/Standing as they teach lessons/In all positions./Preaching at the churches/or even giving concerts/They have seen them at every cocktail party/distributing ministrations.

“Where are the thieves?/Where is the murderer?/Probably getting dirty/at the neighbour's patio./And what if it's them/and what if it's me,/the one who plays this guitar/or the one who sings this song./The one who sings this song.”

And still my favorite Shakira music-video ever, because the song itself bristles with energy and the video (directed by Gustavo Garzon) is half-contemporary reality/half-dystopian sci-fi. “Ciega, sordomuda,” from the same 1999 album.

A sample of these lyrics: “Argument and methodology/fail me/each time your anatomy/appears before me./Because this love no longer understands/advice or reason./It feeds on pretext/and lacks nerve [literally, pants].... Brutish, blind, deaf-mute,/clumsy, lost, stubborn/this is all that I have been/because of you I've turned into/a thing that does/no other thing but love you/I think on you day and night/and I know not how to forget you.”

On her website, Shakira wrote this message for Garcia Marquez: “Dear Gabo, you once said that life isn't what one lived, but the life one remembers and how he remembers it to retell it...your life, dear Gabo, will be remembered by all of us as a unique and singular gift, and as the most original story of all. It's difficult to say goodbye to you, with all that you've given us! You will always be in my heart and in those of all who loved and admired you. Shak"

Crazy on the mic: Deceased Artistes the Ultimate Warrior and Mickey Rooney

They say celebrities die in threes. Sometimes we only get two at a time, as happened this week when we learned of the deaths of Golden Age Hollywood stalwart Mickey Rooney and the pro-wrestler known as “the Ultimate Warrior.” Both men had very different show business careers, but both were alike in that they made little sense when being interviewed. For “Warrior”(Jim Hellwig did legally change his name to “Warrior” – presumably to block the McMahon ownership of the phrase “Ultimate Warrior” and allow him to keep the name when he moved to other federations) it was part of his shtick, but he clearly also believed the inspirational gobbledygook he imparted to his cheering fans; with Rooney, it was a matter of one-upping the interviewer and speaking the Voice of Authority. A really crazy, crazy authority.

First, let's view the Ultimate Warrior in action – no, not wrestling (the steroided “monster” types that Vince McMahon has favored over the last three decades can't do shit in the ring). He affected the same sort of gravelly voice that a number of the “sports entertainment” stars have had over the years. His spiels, though, were nowhere as blatantly funny and aggressive as Ric Flair or “the Macho Man.”

Instead, the Warrior – whose use of steroids gave him the most pronounced nipples in the WWF – would talk about his fans as “warriors” and do rambling discourses (half-screamed, half-whispered) on what he would do in the ring, interspersed with the occasional lopsided metaphor.

He also hit on the fact that if he could say his opponent's name in an accentuated way and repeat it a thousand times, he'd have a five-minute promo without having to come up with any additional thinking. Here it's “Hulk Ho-kan.” “Mean Gene” Okerlund is a perfect straight man here:

The Warrior frequently would do his promos with his back to the camera (making him, as friend M. Faust pointed out, “the Miles Davis of wrestlers”). Here he does the gravelly biz, plus saying “Ho-kan” over and over, ending with a metaphor about a plane crashing. The piece ends with the nasal snort that became the Warrior's signature punctuation mark.

A fan-edited collection of Warrior's promos has this amazing piece of free verse: “Dig your claws into my organs/Stretch into my tendons/Bury your anchors into my bones, for the power of the Warrior will always PREVAIL!”

By this point it's evident that Warrior knew how to craft *professional* craziness (that's a pro-wrestler's job), but where is the connection to the real-life craziness that Mickey Rooney exhibited? I must note that Warrior became a self-made political pundit of sorts when his wrestling career was over. He wrote fervently conservative blog entries online, spoke as much about political situations as he did pro-wrestling, and did speaking engagements (using his real, non-gravelly voice) where he dispensed wisdom that had all the sound illogic of the plane-crash metaphor above.

His most famous speaking engagement was at the University of Connecticut in 2005. At one point he was asked about gay rights and decided to tackle the situation head-on by noting that “Queering doesn't make the world work” (see it at 4:30 below). This from a guy who worked for many years in a completely oiled-down state, tangling his limbs with those of other adult males, as they both strove to prove their manhood.

He returned to this subject a few times, including his nasty obit for Heath Ledger, whom he depicted as advancing the gay agenda by being in Brokeback Mountain. The Deadspin site put up an entertaining “hit list” of Warrior's private beliefs and public excesses.

To conclude my section on the unexpected insanity of Warrior, let me just point to this blog entry on a very special issue of the Warrior comic book, in which our hero attacks the North Pole and takes Santa's place, but not before tying up Saint Nick in a very bondage-like way. The issue is known online as the “Santa rape” comic book. To be entirely fair to Warrior, he was supposed to have been the co-writer of the comic, but claimed later on that he just let the illustrators do what they wanted.

So Warrior did craft a very eccentric image that was built upon, first, a crazy cartoonish character and, later, some deep conspiracy-minded right-wing beliefs. Mickey Rooney, on the other hand, was a died-in-the-wool Hollywood legend who was at one point the most popular star in America (1939-41), thanks to his “Andy Hardy” series of films, but later on became a kooky old character actor who was the very definition of “quirky senior.”

Mickey did indeed start in silent film – and with his death, the list of surviving actors from the silents gets even smaller. As a public personality Rooney was anything but silent, though (sorry – had to). He was known for hijacking interviews with other panelists, as seen here on a Larry King episode about Marilyn Monroe. Milton Berle (he of the giant penis and horrible disposition) gets plenty pissed at Little Mick for his constant interruptions.

Mickey wanted to be the center of attention, as he was here on the PTL Club with the amazingly artificial Tammy Faye Bakker. At one point (34:00 in), he recounts to us a conversation he had with Christ (he unfortunately only tells us his side of the conversation). In general, though, he really loved to contradict his interviewers for no good reason and to no good effect. (Of course earlier in his career he was just plain drunk on-air, as he was on The Jack Paar Show.)

Here is an interview with Mick conducted by Canadian broadcaster Michael Enright (thanks to Richard L. for the tip). For some unknown reason, Rooney does the Python “Argument Clinic” bit with Enright here, contradicting basically everything he says, even when he's correct or merely stating an opinion. At the outset Enright laments that it was an interview that went horribly wrong, as if he did something to cause the chaos. What one gets out of it is that Mickey was contentious just because he could be – and that he liked to stretch out words.

Speaking of that... here is my personal fave bit of Rooney nuttiness. When told that younger people do watch The Twilight Zone, Mickey disagreed (but of course!) and informed his interviewer (identity unknown to me) that they just watch “ssssssexy things.” What a perfectly Rooney way to say that phrase....

One of the more notable explosions in an interview occurred when TCM's affable nice-guy interviewer Robert Osborne interviewed Mickey about his career and literally shrank back from the Mick as he praised Louis B. Mayer (at 12:00), and then again when he told the story of how his career and reputation were ruined by director Roy Rowland (at 29:30). Perhaps these interviews were Rooney's greatest performances:

There is an odd “sizzle reel” (yes, that term is ridiculous, especially for this material) on YT for what looks to have been an unfinished docu about Mickey and his wife Jan, from whom he separated two years back. It appears that the arguments between the couple were intended to be amusing, but Mickey looks really pissed off in most scenes in this montage.

To close out, I will offer you the two Mickey film performances that best define the man. I used scenes from these two movies on the Funhouse TV show when filmmaker Guy Maddin noted he'd like to work with Rooney. I asked which Mickey he'd rather have in his films, the young one or the old one, and he replied that either would do. “He's just so eager.” A good word to describe the screen's best Puck:

And although Steve Puchalski of Shock Cinema magazine has found an utterly astounding later performance by Mick (as a millionaire who wants to live as an adult baby!), that can be found here, the film that still seems to define the older Rooney is B.J. Lang Presents, aka The Manipulator (1971).

The film is deeply disturbing on a number of levels. Chiefly because its plot involves an actress (Luana Anders) being held hostage by crazy director Mickey in an abandoned film studio. This means that we, the audience, are held hostage by Rooney and spend 90 horrifying minutes in his company. Mickey in drag, Mickey as Cyrano, Mickey playing the ultimate Old Hollywood filmmaker, and having nightmares about his naked, makeup-caked, father and mother.

Filmmaker Yabo Yablonsky never made another film, and it's evident why. Here he tapped into a nightmare so terrifying that he never needed to make another movie. Here he trapped on celluloid the essence of Rooney.

The trailer is below, the whole film can be found here.

Tell us a story: Lars von Trier's 'Nymphomaniac'

Sex is the ultimate red herring in Lars von Trier’s masterfully cruel and compassionate Nymphomaniac, which is now available for “complete” viewing (read: the second half, dubbed Volume Two, is now in release). The real subjects of the film are depression and storytelling. The first informs the sequences in which our heroine Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is degrading herself in the pursuit of release; the second is reflected in the film’s “Scheherazade” structure, in which said heroine recounts her life story to Seligman (Stellan Skarsgard), a sympathetic, know-it-all Swede.

Although many pieces written about the film have, naturally enough, focused on the sex sequences, the storytelling frame device is key to understanding and enjoying the film (yes, the latter is possible), as they are reflections of von Trier’s pitch-black humor and his literary (modernist literary, that is) approach to telling a tale. The grimness of Joe’s story is counterpointed by the fact that her audience keeps interrupting (“this was one of your weakest digressions,” she informs him at one point) and that she is an entirely unreliable narrator.

This last notion, that of the “unreliable narrator,” is a cornerstone of Nymphomaniac that leavens the film and allow us to gain some distance from the severity of the sex sequences, many of which are moments of self-destruction rather than fulfillment. Normally we accept stories told in a film as being “true” (willing suspension of disbelief and all that) — here, in Volume One, Joe is interrupted at one key point by Seligman, who notes that there is a ridiculous coincidence in her story — thus causing us to wonder if she’s been embellishing, or if her tale is mostly fantasy.

The uncertainty that arises from the storytelling sequences make the film’s “extreme” moments even more effective, since we realize that the crazier the event, the more possible it is that Joe is making it all up. The two best examples of this are perhaps the most extreme sequences in the film, a humorous set-piece and Joe's most severe S&M moment.

The most humorous sequence – besides an amusing piece of physical comedy inspired by an old Harpo Marx routine – is the sequence where Joe and her married bedmate “Mr. H” are confronted by “Mrs. H” (Uma Thurman), a vengeful and oh-so-melodramatic wife. The sequence is beautifully played by Thurman, whose character says she doesn't want to cause any trouble, but that's exactly what she proceeds to do – humiliating her husband by dragging the children in to react to the fact that Daddy's leaving them, and assuring her husband and Joe (who does not want to become emotionally involved with H) that she will be just fine now that her husband has deserted her.

von Trier's critics accuse him of being “pretentious” because he often deals with angst and utilizes a bleak but exquisite visual style inspired by Tarkovsky (who is thanked in the credits here). These critics are mostly uncomfortable with von Trier's laser-like focus on the sort of odd behavior that depression provokes; what they overlook (or, more accurately, ignore) is the big amount of humor that appears in his films.

It thus makes perfect sense for the “Mrs. H” sequence to appear in a seemingly “bleak” film like Nymphomaniac because von Trier has been honing his dark, odd sense of humor since his breakout feature The Element of Crime (1984) and his superbly absurd horror TV miniseries The Kingdom (1994).

He has only made one film that is an out-and-out comedy (The Boss of It All, 2006), but his most peculiar film, the Dogma-inspired The Idiots (1998), contains a good deal of awkwardly humorous moments. Melancholia (2011) remains one of his most effective works because he brings the viewer into the world of Dunst and Gainsbourg's characters with the broad comedy contained in the first half of the film.

*****

In Nymphomaniac, Joe's sex addiction is so obsessive and self-destructive that von Trier clearly wanted us to both feel for her and to move outside her dilemma to see how truly bizarre her life has become – this is stretched in the film's final “act,” in which she becomes a story-telling debt collector for a wealthy criminal (Willem Dafoe). At that point the intensity of Gainsbourg's performance is what keeps the film from falling apart.

While the “Mrs H” sequence is one of the key moments in Volume One of the film, the most important moment in Volume Two is definitely the sequence where she is worked over by a violent gentleman (“K,” played by Jamie Bell) who conducts brutal sessions with submissive women.

Joe becomes addicted to the sessions and finally has her “ultimate” encounter with this gentleman when she is able to get herself off while he beats her (thus breaking his rule that sex should have no part in the sessions). The sequence is shot as a pretty standard moment of R-rated S&M, but, again, Gainsbourg's performance is so intense that we feel both her shame and humiliation, and the illicit turn-on she's getting from achieving something she has been formally “denied.”

The scene is without a doubt the most intense in the film, as it currently exists in its four-hour, two-part form (the “director's cut” running five-and-a-half hours will supposedly be released in the months to come). It successfully makes the viewer flinch, although Gainsbourg's narration and her release serve to remind us of the artifice that von Trier has introduced, the notion that this could merely be Joe's fantasy – the only thing that we know is absolutely true are the bruises on her face and body from a beating she suffered before Seligman found her in the courtyard adjacent to his apartment building.

Gainsbourg's thoroughly committed performance is indeed the glue that holds the film together. Like his heroes Bergman and Fassbinder, von Trier has given many of his lead actresses career-defining roles. Gainsbourg has gotten three such roles, all of which seem to be (if Charlotte's interviews are to be believed) manifestations of his own neurotic, anxious, depressed personality.

She is absolutely fearless in Nymphomaniac, imbuing Joe with an aching loneliness and a suicidal urge that makes her come to life. She's a person we can feel sympathy for, while we become increasingly disturbed by her extreme behavior. Gainsbourg's “posh” British accent makes Joe even more of an enigma – a woman with a ladylike demeanor and voice who wants men to hurt, fuck, and/or abuse her (with the exception of her true love, played by Shia LaBeouf). 

The film is not an “easy view,” but von Trier's work is always demanding and always worth the attention. Here he has assembled a terrific cast who lend dimension to their roles, whether briefly seen and vaguely scripted (Dafoe) or featured prominently but intended as a “reflection” of our lead character (Stacy Martin, who plays the “jail bait” Joe).

As for the scenes that are missing from the Volume One/Volume Two version: one can clearly see where a few of the edits were made. Sex scenes are about to occur and then don't, or conclude so quickly that one wonders why they are present at all (as with a scene where Joe has sex with two African men, which is led up to for several minutes and then ends summarily). 

What is particularly enjoyable about the “Volumes” version of the film is that editors Molly Marlene Stensgaard and Morten Hojbjerg chose to leave in most of Joe and Seligman's tangential conversations (about sin, anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism, PC language, and the double standard that rules women's sexuality), which don't “advance the plot” in any conventional way.

When one looks at the film's structure, though, it becomes apparent that these dialogues are the plot, just as much as any of Joe's memories. These tangents punctuate and sometimes blatantly interrupt her story, lending it balance and making Seligman a surrogate for the viewer. (How often have you seen a film where a character coincidentally bumps into the most important person in their life and wanted to note how truly unbelievable that is?)

It's hard to imagine what von Trier will do now that his “Charlotte trilogy” is over. One thing is certain: each of the films is a stylized masterwork that is both deeply disturbing and oddly, brazenly playful. In making the films, von Trier might have exposed much of his own darker side, but he has also provided Gainsbourg with the opportunity to show that she is one of the finest (and, again, most fearless) actresses around.
*****


The film's trailer, the one that is littered with review quotes on it. It's been considered “dirty” and has been labeled adult matter by YouTube (American companies pride themselves on their prudishness):

Lars hasn't been doing interviews for the film because of the “Nazi” problem at Cannes a few years back. Some of his older interviews are instructive, though, as is this one, where he talked about the film before he had shot it (audio only). He emphasizes that de Sade put a “lot of talk” in between his sex scenes:

Lars on battling depression:

Bonus clips: Lars in happier times, doing a music-video (!) for his film The Idiots.



A stunning little music-video made for The Kingdom in which Lars helps demonstrate the medical dance "The Shiver." If you think he's strange now, he was much stranger before:



Surely an odd cure for depression: the Rammstein song "Fuhre Mich," as heard in Nymphomaniac, Volume One:

A look into the working methods of Alain Resnais — and which comic books (and strips) did he read anyway?

Of all the filmmakers in the nouvelle vague, Alain Resnais had perhaps the oddest journey, from rigorous aesthete to director of charming middle-aged romances. These later films were remarkable, in that they were just as concerned with his already-established dominant themes — time and space and the disappearance/appearance of love — and yet they were quite linear and didn’t offer the sort of chronological “puzzles” present in his startlingly innovative early work. 

When Resnais became a Deceased Artiste the other week at 91, I wasn’t sure how I wanted to discuss him on this blog, since his filmography can be easily broken down into several “periods”: the first group of documentaries and shorts; the classic early fiction features, each written by a noted author; his late Sixties/early Seventies work, in which the storylines start to become more linear and big-names (Belmondo, Dirk Bogarde, Depardieu) begin appearing in his films; the first films with his muse Sabine Azema, in which he starts to explore theatrical concerns (in a cinematic context, *always* in the context of movies); and the final group of utterly charming middle-aged (and sometimes senior) romances, all costarring Azema, Pierre Arditi, and Andre Dussolier. (I deeply love Same Old Song, which I wrote about here – with all attribution scrubbed by a later editor of the site.)

I’ve been charting on the Funhouse TV show how Godard has remained the most influential of all the “New Wave” filmmakers (he is also one of three surviving members of the group, along with Agnes Varda and the now-ailing Jacques Rivette). In recent years I’ve noticed that many filmmakers —especially those in Asia, led by Wong Kar-Wai — have been quoting Resnais with equal enthusiasm. His early meditations on time, memory, and identity evidently resonate with these directors, and it’s fascinating to see their variations on his themes.

Resnais was indeed a multi-faceted artist whose work showed the influence of classical art (check out his early shorts on libraries and museums), modernist fiction, and the cinematic masters from different eras (including silent cinema). He also was a comic book and comic strip reader, and made no effort to hide it.

In interviews Resnais betrayed a self-deprecating attitude toward his own skill (see him discussing how he does not consider himself an auteur here). When asked about his strengths as a filmmaker, he often said he felt most comfortable as an editor, that was his truest “vocation.” Clearly his interest in comics fed into that. Thus he was an artist who embraced both the “high” and (so-called) “low” extremes of culture (here he notes he doesn’t mind his films being called “baroque”).

Yes, Resnais was a rabid comic buff who, one obit noted, served as the vice president of the French comic club des Bandes Desinees.” A few other obits reported that he was supposed to have had the biggest comic collection in all of France (as Wikipedia sez, “citation needed” on that bit of trivia).

However many comics he owned, it was clear that, while cinema, literature, and theater were his primary concerns, his love of comic books (and strips) was never that far behind. He wasn't a “pop-art” director like William Klein, and he didn't paint his sets primary colors and use the jump-cut in the comic-like manner of Uncle Jean (aka M. Godard), but every few years Resnais would indeed sneak in mentions of his passion for comics.

In Resnais' 1956 documentary short “Toutes la mémoire du monde,” his study of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, he takes time out (at 8:45) to drift past a stack of Sunday supplements, with “Mandrake the Magician” and “Dick Tracy” on the front page of the top two.

The crew and “cast” (in this case meaning extras) is pretty extraordinary: cinematographer Ghislain Cloquet, composer Maurice Jarre, with “collaboration” from poet Jean Cayrol, cinematographer Pierre Goupil, “Chris and Magic Marker” (that’s how he was billing himself then), Agnes Varda, and the man who created Mandrake, cartoonist Lee Falk.

Then the leap into Sixties comics: Brian Cronin over at the Comic Book Resources site has clarified the rumors surrounding a supposed “script written by Stan Lee and Alain Resnais.” Cronin's research reveals there were two projects the duo were going to work on, the first being an existential story about inmates in a jail in the Bronx, the second a more “personal” work for Stan the Man about a schlocky horror director who graduates to direct a mainstream feature. (The clipping to the right comes from this Tumblr.)

Cronin includes a quote from Lee in which he notes that the second project nearly got off the round, but Resnais refused the prospective producer's request to cut Lee's script – given Resnais' utter devotion to his screenwriters, this sounds more than probable.

What remains from the friendship between the two is an oddity: a four-minute segment shot by Resnais and narrated by Stan Lee for the director Jacques Doillon's political comedy-drama L’an 01 (1973).

The film chronicles the day in which all French workers give up working in protest of the government being, well... the government. This radical action is recognized as a breakthrough around the world (it's not a very well-thought-out political satire, this film), as illustrated by a scene shot by Jean Rouch in Nigeria and a segment shot in NYC by Resnais.

Thus we hear Stan read out imaginary stock exchange rates. It's a fun segment, if only to see NYC in the early Seventies. Doillon's film is more of a joyously nuts historical artifact than a legitimately entertaining (or politically pointed) film, so the Resnais segment is one of its highlights – it begins here at 30:42:

Perhaps it was a good thing that Stan and Alain never got to collaborate, since the Resnais film that most directly celebrates comics, and was scripted by an iconic cartoonist, is one of his most disappointing. 

I Want to Go Home (1989) is the tale of an American cartoonist (played by composer Adolph Green) who visits Paris with his girlfriend (Linda Lavin) on the occasion of an exhibit of cartoon art that includes his work. The exhibit has been curated by a French fanatic for American comics (played by Depardieu); the cartoonist’s visit allows his daughter (Laura Benson) who has been living in Paris, to see her cranky old man and try to heal their relationship.

Considering the fact that Resnais was such a major comic fan, and that the great Feiffer wrote the screenplay, one expects more from the film than it ultimately delivers — plus, Green was a wonderful lyricist, but he really was not a very good actor.

That said, the most interesting moments in the film all take place when Depardieu hosts a costume party in which the guests are dressed like comic book and cartoon characters. In these scenes we see people dressed as Marvel and D.C. characters (the iconic ones, as well as Elektra and the Spectre), cartoon strip mainstays (Popeye, Olive Oyl, Tarzan, and Mandrake — yes, that’s Geraldine Chaplin), and animated favorites (Tweety Bird). The most notable inclusion is a Feiffer favorite (and most likely, one of Resnais’ favorites as well), Will Eisner’s The Spirit.

In the montage below, which I uploaded to YT, I included not only the most colorful scenes from the costume party, but also the moments when Green’s character discusses old cartoonists. (By the way, Green is dressed as his own comic creation.)

That must be the first and only instance of a couple “meeting cute” over Will Eisner books.

As a closer, I offer a three-minute segment from an interview I conducted for the Funhouse TV show with Lambert Wilson, the very talented actor who starred in four of Resnais’ final films. This talk took place upon the U.S. premiere at the “Rendezvous with French Cinema” of Resnais’ Not on the Lips.

The exceptionally dapper Monsieur Wilson (yes, he is French, a fact you’d never know from his beautiful English) elaborates Resnais’ method with his actors from the Nineties onward (in the “middle-aged romance” period I mentioned above). I noticed that he refers to the director throughout as “alainresnais,” presumably in deference to M. Resnais’ age — that is not the case. Check out the various interviews with his actors and colleagues on YouTube, in both English and French, and you’ll find that the filmmaker was most always “alainresnais” to even his chummiest of colleagues (and his wife Sabine!).

Wilson provides us with a valuable insight into Resnais’ work with his actors. Plus, he spotlights Resnais’ favorite movie comedian (he is a lot like Woody Allen in this regard) and which variety of comic he had laying around his house (although I’m sure he loved Marvel too — see above). I had a wonderful time talking to Wilson, and this is definitely one of the highlights of our chat.

The 'control freak' who overcame a repressive government: Deceased Artiste Vera Chytilová

Once seen it is never forgotten. Daisies (1966) is an energetic, disturbing, strange, funny, irritating, profound, ridiculous, and mind-altering film that fits snugly in with Sixties cinema, in that it alters the viewer's mind as it presents a story (sort of) that can be taken as an allegory for the circumstances under which it was made, or an allegory for Western civilization as a whole. The woman who made it, Vera Chytilová, died this week at 85, leaving behind a relatively small body of films and a very large legacy of rebellion against the Soviet authority in her home country of Czechoslovakia.

She was brought up a Catholic (which pretty much explains everything – both the adherence and the rebellion) and capsule biographies love to list the professions she had before filmmaker: technical draftsman (draftsperson?), fashion model, photo retoucher, and “clapper girl.” She studied film for five years (1957-62) and made some shorts and a debut feature before the explosion of sight, sound, and insanity that is Daisies.

The film (which got the full-episode treatment on the Funhouse TV show back in the fall of 1995) follows two young women as they roam around, causing trouble, defrauding millionaires (making it an interesting potential co-feature for Hawks' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), having food fights, and being generally both sexy and doll-like, and extremely rebellious. It gets on the viewer's nerves at points, but is so wonderfully stylish and blissfully bizarre that even those who aren't digging it wind up admitting it's a hell of a cinematic ride.

It surely was intended to be an allegory about the ways in which the average person can subvert authority. What Chytilová did to “sell” the film was to make the two lead characters attractive women who are first seen in bikinis – even the most sexist straight male (who believes “there are no good films directed by women”) shuts up when the two cute leads appear at the beginning of the film.

That same sexist (and yes, just about every other male watching the film) gets a little antsy when the film's most mind-warping scene finds the girls cutting up reality itself with pairs of scissors (there seems to be a subtext there...).

The fact that the film was an allegory about rebellion didn't escape the Czech government – in fact most of the films made by the Czech New Wave in the mid-Sixties were very realistically-shot allegories (Vera opted out of the naturalistic, realist approach) that clearly condemned bureaucratic, repressive governments.

As a result, some of the films were banned, most notably Daisies, A Report on the Party and Guests by Jan Nĕmec (1966), and The Joke (1969) by Jaromil Jireš. (All three of these films are in the Pearls of the Czech New Wave DVD box set from the “Eclipse” arm of the Criterion Collection.)

Chytilová avoided offering interpretations of her work (and noted she didn't like “cuddling” her audience), but various interesting quotes can be found in which she offers a personal philosophy. She contextualized the “doll-like” qualities of her two leads with this quote: “Everyone does what they can to avoid thinking. Laziness is the most basic human trait. People don't want to think – they can't make the connection between entertainment and thought. They want immediate kicks. People will not be human until they get pleasure from a thought – only a thinking person can be a full person.”

She stated in an exclusive interview on this blog that the film was not “about the Czech youth,” as had been perceived. “What we wanted to make was an existential film and to use it as a protest against the destruction of the country. What was interesting was that the western part of the world perceived this film as being against all conventions. So it’s clear that it depends from what angle you perceive the film....

“We thought that the creativity as well as destruction was two sides of the same coin because people who are not capable of creation get their kicks from destruction.... The film was laughing at them, ridiculing them, and I think they understood that. Therefore, the film wasn’t shown in cinemas.”

The charges against the film can be found in a document located here. One of the most interesting things about the government ban on the film (which won prizes at foreign film festivals) was that one National Assembly deputy argued in favor of it because Daisies contained imagery of the wasting of food (“the fruit of the work of our toiling farmers”!). In case you wonder what wasting food looks like, this is it:

She made one more film before the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia. The Fruit of Paradise (1969) is another incredibly, stylishly odd film. It reworks the story of Adam and Eve and has a gorgeous opening that is pure avant-garde filmmaking (it's no wonder at all that the Czechoslovak Communist Party was threatened by her art).

Unlike her colleagues Milos Forman and Ivan Passer, Chytilová refused to leave Czechoslovakia. She was effectively banned from making films for six years, wasn't allowed to leave the country to attend film festivals, and had script after script quashed by government offices, but she stayed in the country, perhaps because (as is indicated in a later interview cited below) she wasn't the kind of person who took “no” for an answer.

Photo by Tono Stano

In the autumn of 1975, after having several projects killed off and also having found out that she had been invited to foreign film fests that she was not allowed to attend (the government would lie, saying she was unavailable), she wrote an open letter to Czech president Gustav Husak. She noted that the party line was that she lacked “a positive attitude to socialism.”

The letter can be found here. It closes with the stirring statement, “As a citizen, a woman, a mother and a film director, I will continue to fight for the ideals of a socialist society and will do my utmost to bring about their realisation.”

As a result of this campaign, she was allowed to direct her own projects again, her “comeback” film being The Apple Game (1977). At this point it becomes interesting to consider her thoughts about being a “feminist” filmmaker. She was quite proud to be a woman filmmaker, but the feminist label wasn't one she cottoned to, according to a later interview in The Guardian:

“[Chytilová] explains that she does not believe in feminism per se, but in individualism. 'If there's something you don't like, don't keep to the rules – break them. I'm an enemy of stupidity and simple-mindedness in both men and women and I have rid my living space of these traits.'”

What is also revealed in this Guardian piece – in which she is referred to as “the Margaret Thatcher of Czech Cinema” because of her control-freak tendencies – is the fact that “film-making with Chytilova is by all accounts a harrowing experience. She shouts and screams, and gleefully admits to beating up her cameramen when they prove unwilling to try out new ideas.” (Perhaps this is why she could take the metaphorical beating imposed on her by the Czech authorities?)

We know little in America about her later films (there are 13 post-“ban” features and 6 documentaries listed in her IMDB listing, but IMDB is a not-exactly-reliable resource). Perhaps the most bizarre was the box-office hit she directed in 1993 from a script by Czech film and stage star Bolek Polivka. It has the wonderful name The Inheritance or Fuckoffguysgoodday (1993).

According to this review by an American blogger, the film is a broad, “obnoxious” comedy that is tolerable only because one of the female costars is “ridiculously hot.” The reviewer notes the film has no resemblance to Chytilová's earlier avant-garde work like Daisies.

The one festival of her films that brought her post-Daisies work to the American public (well, at least the NYC “metro area” public) was a five-film retrospective of her work in the late 1990s (that included her 1966 classic and four post-"ban" titles, including The Apple Game, right) on the CUNY-TV program City Cinematheque. The piece de resistance was an exclusive interview with Chytilová conducted by host Jerry Carlson (through a translator, if I remember correctly). To my knowledge, Carlson's is the *only * interview of Chytilová done in the U.S. for television. (If you know of others, leave a comment at the end of this piece.)

To pay final tribute to her, I have to turn to the prickly interview she gave the Guardian interviewer. In the article, Chytilová admits to having “recently attempted to direct her own death scene. At home and feeling under the weather, she became convinced her hours were numbered. 'I found the idea rather disagreeable that the moment after my death, I would lose total control of what happened, and someone would have to find my remains.' As it turned out, she was just suffering from wind, but the experience was humbling.”

It seems that, once Chytilová was able to throw herself back into filmmaking full-time (during the six-year ban she made works with her husband under his name and took time out to raise her children) she went at it full-bore. “You always have to work as if what you're working on could be your last,” she says in the Guardian interview. “I want to move on, even if I have to crawl.”

As some visual extras I offer the following clips. First is Chytilová's segment from Pearls of the Deep (1965), “Automat Svet” (without English subs). She has never offered a list of her influences, but this short reminded me of Vigo's timeless L’Atalante:

Next are two other clips from The Fruit of Paradise (1969), her Eden saga. These clips contain no dialogue and are pure dream-like weirdness. The Freudian symbolism is apparent (the man wants to wrap the woman in his red cloth!), but the filmmaking is trippy and wonderful:

A second clip, in which our heroine discovers things inside and outside:

Two clips from The Apple Game (1977), which appear to have been posted because the female in 'em is topless/nude. In any case, it's an example of more linear, scripted scenes that occurred in her later work (plus, again, the notion that she knew how to draw straight male viewers in):

A very short, subtitled scene from her 2001 film Expulsion from Paradise. A film about the making of a film, Expulsion is another, more serious film she directed from a script by Bolek Polvka, the star of her Fuckoffguysgoodday hit comedy:

I'll close out with brief glimpses of the later films by Chytilová that we never saw. This is a commercial montage for a festival of her works: