Sometimes It Pays to Do Your Homework.

As anyone connected to me via social media / telephone lines / bleary library eye contact is already well aware, I spent the better part of December 2012 & January 2013 writing numerous words about Spanish writer/director Pedro Almodóvar. (Or—well—many days stressing over & avoiding those words, & then several frantically churning them out like the overcaffeinated spawn of the Tasmanian Devil & a racecar battery.) Anyhow, the whole process was somewhat hazy & bonkers & left me all but zapped of brain matter—but ultimately, it paid off, in this case rather literally.

As it turns out, one of the essays I wrote was selected as the winner of the first annual Andrew Sarris Memorial Scholarship Award for Film Criticism. Aside from how endlessly honored & humbled & floored & ecstatic I feel (to have any tiny part in the legacy of the critic who established auteur theory, to know that greats like Molly Haskell & Caryn James read my prose & found it even remotely pleasant), the title also comes with $750. Which is just beyond.

Anyhow, several people have since asked to read the essay in question, so, for those interested, here it is below—only slightly altered from its submitted form, to fix typos & some phrasing that proved intolerably wonky upon re-reading. (Also, if for whatever reason you want to read a similar argument articulated over 25 pages through transwomen & Judith Butler—AKA, my senior thesis—let me know, & I can certainly make that happen.)

"Positively Anti-Realist"

Art, Artifice, and the Power of Fiction in the Films of Pedro Almodóvar

Since his career began in 1978, writer/director Pedro Almodóvar has become one of modern cinema’s most prodigious and recognizable auteurs. Though his oeuvre spans decades, with eighteen full-length films and many awards and accolades (including two Oscars) to his name, all of his films seem to bear certain signature stylistic traits: bright colors, strong female characters, melodramatic tone and plot twists, celebration of queer sexuality—even a cadre of recurring performers (including current household names Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz, both of whom owe their success in large part to roles in Almodóvar’s early films). However, beyond these somewhat superficial similarities, there seems to be a deeper uniting thematic trend that spans his body of work: regardless of the specific circumstances of his films’ plotlines, Almodóvar proves himself time and time again to be a creator obsessed with the process of artistic creation. His films repeatedly focus attention on the borderline between reality and artifice, fact and fiction—and show it to be permeable and difficult to maintain. Indeed, many of his films—such as Law of Desire (1987), Bad Education (2004), and Broken Embraces (2009)—explicitly chronicle the travails of filmmaker protagonists and thereby engage directly in the practice of metafilm, implicitly (sometimes, even explicitly) laying bare the inner workings of their own cinematic construction. This somewhat jarring process necessarily forces the viewer to recognize the suspension of disbelief required to engage with film—to reconcile the undeniably artificial nature of what one is seeing with the extent to which it is still affecting. Moreover, even in films of his that don’t explicitly explore the process of filmmaking—for example, All About My Mother (1999), Talk to Her (2002), and his most recent output, The Skin I Live In (2011)—Almodóvar still seems intent on investigating the influence of art, whether by including explicit references to (or even clips from) other films, or by foregrounding other artistic practices, such as theater, dance, and sculpture. In each case, Almodóvar showcases the ways in which artifice can have a direct and powerful influence on the “reality” of each film’s diegesis; performance, deception, and the production of art are all central to the stories he seeks to tell. One might even term Almodóvar’s films “positively anti-realist,” as theorist Paul Burston does in his essay “Genre Bender,” in that his films constitute “a world which regularly draws attention to its own construction” (143). Indeed, by commenting so frequently on the ways in which art affects life, Almodóvar seems intent on breaking down the presumed hierarchy that privileges reality over artifice, even on destabilizing the very notion of “reality” altogether. Ultimately, Almodóvar’s films represent a collective ode to the power of fiction—a recognition that, in many cases, art can be more “real” than reality, or at the very least equally as relevant.

Of course, this foregrounding of the importance of art is perhaps most explicit in the Almodóvar films that specifically focus on the act of filmmaking, as, in both style and subject matter, they suggest a correlation between the endeavors of their filmmaker protagonists and the work going on behind Almodóvar’s camera. Indeed, in each of these three films-about-filmmaking, the protagonist is a male director, and each one bears varying degrees of resemblance to Almodóvar himself. Law of Desire, for example, revolves around young director Pablo Quintero, an apparently successful member of the up and coming queer Spanish film scene in the 80s, just as Almodóvar was at the time. Also, Almodóvar has since revealed in interviews that certain aspects of Pablo’s character were based on his own actions—for example, writing the “perfect love letter” he would like to receive himself, then asking his lover merely to sign it and send it back, as Pablo does with his lover Juan early in the film (Smith, 79).

In Bad Education, this linkage between diegetic and actual directors becomes formally explicit, even to those with no knowledge of Almodóvar’s personal backstory. As the opening credits sequence comes to a close, we see the customary closing title card “Guión y Dirección [script and direction] Pedro Almodóvar.” However, after a few moments, Almodóvar’s name fades, the background image dissolves from its harsh black, white, and red palette to full Technicolor, and the words “Guión y Dirección Enrique Goded” fade in over what is now a picture of several flight attendants in colorful uniforms posing by the silhouette of a plane. As a disembodied voice begins to tell the story of a motorcyclist who froze to death while on the highway, the camera slowly pulls back from the image of the flight attendants, revealing the edges of an ornate gold frame, and then begins to pan to the left, revealing a young man, sitting across the desk from another man, reading aloud. The first man finishes his story, and Almodóvar settles into a close-up on his face, as he qualifies it to the man across the desk: “It’s a wonderful image. A dead young man drives his motorcycle across the icy plain, escorted by two patrolmen. … There is a story here. I’ll cut it out and keep it. It might inspire me.” Thus, the set-up is clear: this is Enrique Goded, a filmmaker seeking material for his next project; the image of the flight attendants is a framed poster for one of his past films—one of many that we can now see decorate his office. Of course, as we will learn by the end of the next scene, Enrique is also specifically a gay male film director, again like Pablo and Almodóvar. However, the specific choice to fade from Almodóvar’s credit to Enrique’s makes the viewer’s association between them that much stronger: not only are they paralleled in personality, or even implicitly as obsessive creators working in cinema—as Almodóvar is with Pablo—but here, Almodóvar has almost seen fit to give Enrique a directing credit—or, at the very least, to place his name rather literally on the same level as his own.

Perhaps the most direct parallel between Almodóvar and his film director protagonists occurs in Broken Embraces, with Lluís Homar’s portrayal of Mateo Blanco. Though this time a straight man—whose on set romance with his female star is, in fact, the driving force behind the conflict of the narrative*—Mateo’s linkage to Almodóvar is nonetheless explicit, in that the film we watch him attempt to make, titled Chicas y maletas (“Girls and suitcases”), bears a striking resemblance to Almodóvar’s farcical Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988). From the names of the main characters (“Pepa” versus “Pina,” both of whom have a love interest named “Ivan”), to a plot spurred by the leaving behind of a suitcase, down to even smaller details like the mention of gazpacho spiked with sleeping pills, there is no question that Mateo’s creative work is a reference to Almodóvar’s previous endeavor. Moreover, at the start of Broken Embraces, Almodóvar introduces us to the dual nature of his protagonist’s identity: when asked, in the first line of the film, “What is your name?” the man we see pictured responds, “Harry Caine.” However, immediately after, a voiceover explains: “I used to be called Mateo and I was a film director. I was always tempted by the idea of being someone else as well as myself. Living one life wasn’t enough, so I invented a pseudonym, Harry Caine.” Coming as he does after these other pseudo-Almodóvarian characters, Mateo might be said to represent a version of the director aware of his own past attempts to fictionalize himself—of his ability to thereby, in a sense, “become [his] pseudonym,” as Mateo has.

Of course, the intent behind detailing these parallels between Almodóvar and his onscreen directors is not merely to expose these films as somehow autobiographical. True, both Bad Education and Law of Desire do touch upon elements of Almodóvar’s past (e.g., his brother’s molestation by a priest), and these characters certainly seem to function as undisguised porte-paroles for his own creative passion—exercising their artistic impulse the same way he does and therefore especially well-realized, as their characterization was likely informed by personal experience (Kinder, 269). However, what is most interesting about these explicit connections between Almodóvar and his director protagonists is the self-questioning, even apparently self-sabotaging, metafilmic dimension such paralleling exposes. By focusing on characters who make films for a living, Almodóvar is able to do this in an expressly straightforward way, by cutting back and forth from the film we’re watching to his film-within-a-film at key moments.

For example, in Bad Education, towards the climax of the film itself, we are also presented with a scene of the shooting of the climax of Enrique’s film, La Visita. Of course, prior to describing this particular scene, it’s crucial to explain the convoluted history of the entire film shoot: La Visita is inspired by a short story of the same name, written by Enrique’s childhood schoolmate and onetime lover, Ignacio—a story that is itself based in part on their shared past experience. In the story, Ignacio—an adult and now a transwoman called Zahara—goes back to their old school and attempts to blackmail Padre Manolo, the priest who molested him. Enrique acquires the story at the very beginning of Bad Education (just after reading about that frozen motorcyclist), when Ignacio visits him for the first time in sixteen years to present “La Visita”—and to suggest that Enrique adapt and direct it, in order that he, as an aspiring actor, can play the lead role of Zahara. Enrique initially turns Ignacio down but ends up reading the story anyhow—and, as he reads, his voiceover speaking out the title and first few sentences, describing the town where the two went to school with its decrepit “Cine Olympo” theater, the image onscreen fades from Enrique’s nighttime apartment in Madrid to show that theater. From here, Enrique’s voiceover disappears, and what is presumably the plot of “La Visita” is visualized, without narration, for Almodóvar’s audience. Significantly, Gael García Bernal, the actor who plays Ignacio, also plays Zahara in this visualization—which would seem to make sense: given basic filmic convention, combined with the knowledge that “La Visita” is based on a true story, and especially in light of Enrique’s occasional intercut emotional reactions, this sequence has all the trappings of a traditional flashback.

However, as the film progresses, Enrique discovers that the man (played by Gael García Bernal) who first delivered “La Visita” to him is not actually Ignacio, but is in fact Juan, Ignacio’s younger brother. Still, Enrique doesn’t disclose to Juan that he’s discovered his ruse—rather, he gives him the part of Zahara, just as he wanted, and continues to act as if he were Ignacio. Though certainly an important twist in terms of plot, this uncovering of Juan’s true identity also makes manifest an important stylistic shift for Almodóvar’s audience: rather than an actual flashback, what we were watching as Enrique read “La Visita” for the first time—the way in which we apprehended that story—was footage from his film adaptation, La Visita. Moreover, this fact is explicitly made manifest for the first time in the climactic scene at the film shoot previously mentioned: the scene begins with a medium shot of Juan as Ignacio/Zahara—wearing the same outfit that Zahara wore throughout the initial scenes from “La Visita”—facing away from the camera, as we hear the expected behind-the-scenes pre-take banter (e.g., “rolling”) from off screen. After a moment, a traditional clapboard bearing the chalked-on title, La Visita, is held up into the middle of the shot: in this moment, Almodóvar clearly identifies that his camera and Enrique’s camera are, for now, one and the same. Once the clapboard is removed, we hear Enrique call “action” from off screen, and Juan turns around to begin the scene, his dialogue relating the breaking point of Ignacio’s fight with the (now revealed fictional) Padre Manolo over the intended blackmail. Mere seconds later, however, Almodóvar cuts to a shot, head-on, of Enrique in his director’s chair, surrounded by production assistants, watching the take transpire, sitting next to the camera through which we were just looking—separate, explicitly, from the production of La Visita. Moments later, however, Almodóvar returns to the same shot as before, once again in line with Enrique’s camera—and from here, Almodóvar seems almost to forget himself, diving fully into the scene of La Visita: cutting to a close-up of Juan, then a close-up of the actor playing Padre Manolo, then on through a series of varying shots typical of a traditional film scene, as the story of La Visita continues to play out. Of course, according to the on-set scenario painstakingly set up by the scene’s opening—the clapboard, the shot of Enrique in his director’s chair—this sequence as presented is physically impossible. Given how the first shots of this scene highlight the tediousness of filmmaking, and that the premise of this sequence is of an “on set” atmosphere, to then present these varied compositions (close-ups, panning shots, dolly shots) without any reference as to their construction, simply in the natural course of an edited scene, is necessarily somewhat jarring. By calling attention to the behind-the-scenes nature of film production, then acting as if it never happened, Almodóvar has thus succeeded in making the seamless, captivating flow of traditional film editing noteworthy, even bizarre.

The scene of La Visita continues for several minutes—including Ignacio’s death, as a another priest enters, gags him, and snaps his neck—and as the action appears to draw to a close, with Manolo praying over Ignacio’s limp body, Almodóvar suddenly cuts to a wide shot of the entire set, the left half of which contains the scene in which we were just immersed, while the right half overflows with production personnel and apparatus—Enrique atop a giant camera cart, lights, tripods, exposed planks, and an intrusive boom mike hovering, we can imagine, just above the frame line of the shot we just saw. Even more so than at the start of this sequence, Almodóvar asks us in this moment to recognize the simultaneity of film and filmmaker—how the thralls of fiction are inseparable from the reality of those who produce it. Moreover, by bookending the sequence with references to its production—reminding us at the start of the scene’s constructed nature, allowing it to transpire just long enough to draw us in, and then disrupting that involvement with another assertion of the scene’s fundamental artifice, even including in all of this the ultimate uncanny filmic miracle of a faked death—Almodóvar makes clear not only how a film scene is constructed, but more importantly, just how easy it is to forget that fact, caught up as we are in the narrative.

One might also recognize this as the very same process achieved by the film’s overall structure, as the reveal that Enrique’s “flashbacks” are in fact excerpts from his fictional film reminds us on yet another level of film’s ability to fool: Almodóvar implicitly asks us to care for Enrique and for Ignacio, for their troubled childhood and their thwarted love, before he shows us that those were all actors—that, at this point in the film, we haven’t even met the real Padre Manolo. Of course, in coming to these realizations, one also has to recognize the absurdity of the idea of a “real” Padre Manolo, as he is a fictional character—but this is exactly the seemingly paradoxical register on which metafilm operates: what theorist D. N. Rodowick calls “a classic Freudian Verneinung,” in which, by explicitly “striking an opposition of imaginary”—or, in this case, constructed—“and real as two different narrative registers represented within the same film,” Almodóvar’s fiction thus “asserts all the more stridently its status as ‘reality’” (5).

Indeed, it is crucial at this point to specify that highlighting film as artificial does not necessarily mean proclaiming it somehow meaningless or otherwise ineffectual. Ultimately, it seems that Almodóvar’s goal is precisely the opposite—to prove that there are cases in which fiction can match reality in meaning and import. For example, at the end of this sequence, when the take of his death scene is over and the bustle of production staff begin setting up for the next shot, Juan remains on set, sobbing uncontrollably, clearly moved by what has just been painstakingly proved false. We find out by the end of the film that Juan was directly responsible for his brother’s death, so one might infer that his playing out this sequence, a fundamentally unreal action, was nevertheless genuinely emotionally cathartic.

This use of an artificial or fictional medium to express a crucial emotional development is repeated throughout Almodóvar’s oeuvre. For example, in Broken Embraces, cuckolded mogul Ernesto Martel finds out via film footage—notably, film footage with no recorded sound, such that he has to hire a lip reader to speak the voices—that his girlfriend, Lena, is cheating on him with Mateo. Moreover, when Lena arrives, improbably, at exactly the moment in the footage at which she confesses her love for Mateo, she demands of Ernesto, “Focus on me,” and rather than turn around to look at her in the flesh, he keeps his eyes on the screen, as she speaks from the back of the room, adding the soundtrack to her otherwise mute filmed image. In this case, not only is an important story element conveyed through an artificial medium, but also what Lena identifies as “me” in this moment, as the most relevant version of herself, is the version represented onscreen. In Law of Desire, too, characters’ feelings are repeatedly expressed through art. Pablo’s sister, Tina, while performing Jean Cocteau’s one-woman monologue, La Voix Humaine, uses the words of the play to express frustration to her ex-lover who stands in the wings. Also, Pablo himself seems to have staged this play about tragic distance from a lover as a desperate plea to his own lover, Juan, to return from abroad, something Pablo is repeatedly unable to express to him directly.

Of course, Almodóvar’s characters’ use of artifice to express themselves also, by extension, exposes his own: his films are littered with references to other texts, whether the clip from All About Eve that begins (and is explicitly shown to inspire the title for) All About My Mother, or the fact that the film centers, in large part, around a performance of A Streetcar Named Desire and the parallels the protagonist draws between her life and Stella’s. Even the Pina Bausch dance routines that bookend Talk to Her echo the film’s themes of helplessness and codependence, with their images of, for example, women with their eyes closed flailing through a room of overturned furniture which one lone man must attempt to knock away. In each case, just as with Tina’s and Pablo’s use of Cocteau, these incorporated texts serve to illuminate and exemplify aspects of the film that might otherwise remain underexplored. For example, the work of Louise Bourgeois, a main proponent of confessional art, appears repeatedly throughout The Skin I Live In. Not only is there a shot of her coffee table book in the film’s opening sequence and, later, a clip from the documentary about her art, but also, once these references have been established, we see the protagonist, Vera, making sculptures in Bourgeois’s style. Because The Skin I Live In centers around Vera’s loss of identity—stripped, as she is, by a vengeful plastic surgeon, of every physical aspect of her former male body, even of her former name, “Vicente”—to see her mimic the artistic tradition espoused by Bourgeois, one that privileges physicalizing the psychological, proves her inner strength despite her seeming external powerlessness (McCrae).

By incorporating these outside artworks into his texts, Almodóvar demonstrates the power of art—artifice, created product—to enrich and affect reality, sometimes even to supersede it. Meanwhile, his films, by strategically calling attention to their own construction, also simultaneously assert their effectiveness as the kind of art that can have this power. Ultimately, all taken together—the sum total of the films themselves, as well as the many overlapping themes and correlations, the repeated examination of the effects of fictions—Almodóvar’s oeuvre reminds us of the importance of art to the proper operation of reality, of the fact that, just because something is constructed doesn’t mean it can’t function as, for all intents and purposes, “real.”


* It’s worth noting that, according to interviews, even this attraction to Cruz is authentic to Almodóvar’s experience (France).



WORKS CITED

All About My Mother. Dir. Pedro Almodóvar. Writ. Pedro Almodóvar. Perf. Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes, Antonia San Juan. DVD. 1999.

Bad Education. Dir. Pedro Almodóvar. Writ. Pedro Almodóvar. Perf. Gael García Bernal, Fele Martínez. DVD. 2004.

Broken Embraces. Dir. Pedro Almodóvar. Writ. Pedro Almodóvar. Perf. Penélope Cruz, Lluís Homar. DVD. 2009.

Burston, Paul. What Are You Looking At?: Queer Sex, Style, and Cinema. London: Cassel, 1995.

France, Louise. “Pedro Almodovar and Penélope Cruz … the mentor and the muse.” (2009, 22 August) The Guardian UK. 11 December, 2012. http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/aug/23/almodovar-cruz-film-interview.

Kinder, Marsha. “All About the Brothers: Retroseriality in Almodóvar’s Cinema.” All About Almodóvar: A Passion for Cinema. Ed. Brad Epps and Despina Kakoudaki. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. p. 267-294.

Law of Desire. Dir. Pedro Almodóvar. Writ. Pedro Almodóvar. Perf. Esuebio Poncela, Carmen Maura, Antonio Banderas. DVD. 1987.

McCraw, Trisha. “Louise Bourgeois. Maman: From the Outside In.” Art&Education. artandeducation.net. 11 December, 2012. http://www.artandeducation.net/paper/louise-bourgeois-maman-from-the-outside-in/.

“Pedro Almodóvar.” The Internet Movie Database. 10 December 2012. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0287467/.

Rodowick, D. N. The Virtual Life of Film. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007.

The Skin I Live In. Dir. Pedro Almodóvar. Writ. Pedro Almodóvar. Perf. Antonio Banderas, Elena Ayana. DVD. 2011.

Smith, Paul Julian. Desire Unlimited: The Cinema of Pedro Almodovar. New York: Verso: 1994.

Talk to Her. Dir. Pedro Almodóvar. Writ. Pedro Almodóvar. Perf. Rosario Flores, Javier Cámera. DVD. 2002.




Today's Headphone Fodder:

The Killing Field—Flesh.

Sunset Riding—Flesh.

Southern Trees—Flesh.

City of Shadow, Part 1—Flesh.

A few nights ago, I happened to catch Flesh opening for Bow Wow Wow at The Grand Victory, & I've since become a little obsessed. In short, these songs contain just about everything I like in my organized noise: boppy hooks, brooding, Bauhaus-y vocals, & best of all, Morphine-reminiscent saxophonage. The band describes their sound as "1950's post-apocalyptic surftacular bizarro rocknroll"; I'd call it "The Addams Family Band plays your undersea-themed prom" or "Ian Curtis does the Beach Boys." Of course, they don't have a proper website—but what they do have is a Facebook page &, more importantly, a SoundCloud, which is now perpetually open in my browser. Check it out.

Repostathon II: This Time, It's Personal.

Last week (on Valentine's Day, in fact), The Eye was kind enough to publish my long-labored-over long-lead article: "A Female Tarantino,"a musing on the plight women in film, both in front of & behind the camera, as examined specifically through gender stereotypes, demographic statistics, the Athena Film Festival, & a few choice podcasts. 

Today, Melissa Silverstein, co-founder of the Athena Film Festival & all-around ladyfilm guru, was kind enough to repost the piece on her supercool blog, Women & Hollywood. Among other things, this excellent development reminded me that, speaking of reposting, I've once again managed to let months of published pieces go by without so much as a blip hereabouts. So, for those curious where my words were going during all that time, here's a smattering:


Girls Getting Gross.
A meditation on the current grodiness of onscreen female comedians.

A few weeks ago, a friend sent me a link to the trailer for Bachelorette—the latest buzzed-about summer comedy. ... Though the film’s plot is fairly predictable—a wedding looms, everything goes wrong until it doesn’t, characters start flawed and end less so, etc.—the particular twists and turns of Bachelorette’s tale did make me think about a noteworthy comedy trend, one I both appreciate and wonder at—one I think can most easily be termed “Girls Getting Gross”...

Rebel, Rebel.
Because Rebel Wilson rocks, but our reaction to her doesn't.

So, Rebel Wilson is awesome. That, I won’t deny. From her hilarious turn as Kristen Wiig’s roommate in Bridesmaids to her cameo as a juggalette on Workaholics, everything I’ve seen of this lady, I like. And I’m not alone—see: Sandy Cohen’s HuffPo post from earlier this month, titled “Rebel Wilson: Is The ‘Bachelorette’ Star Hollywood’s Next Leading Comedienne?” Yes, the Industry seems all in a tizzy over its latest discovery—but not, I would argue, for all the right reasons...

Cum-parative Literature.
Because "Hysterical Literature" is a webseries well worth examining (& because it's always fun to get the word "cum" in print).

...What I saw was a static, black-and-white shot, taken waist-up across a typical school desk, of a woman in cat-eye glasses and a polka dot blouse. “Hi, I’m Stormy Leather,” she stated, perfunctory, audition-like, into the camera, “and I am reading from American Psycho, by Brett Easton Ellis.” And that’s just what she did, beginning with a passage in which the deranged narrator waxes poetic on Whitney Houston. After more than a minute, I’ll admit, I was a bit confused, if not disappointed—left wondering what, exactly, qualified this pseudo-adult storytime as “hysterical.” As Stormy went further, though, her tone began to change, rising and falling at odd intervals, Ellis’s prose getting gradually jauntier, even belabored—until, at last, it became eminently clear: she was cumming...

Edible Deodorant.
In which attempt to turn a ridiculous new product into a metaphor for our obsession with celebrity sex scandals. (Yes. Come with me on this. It totally works.)

In browsing the world for 20/20-worthy pop culture this week, I came across what seemed like a veritable onslaught of potential topics, a decent number of which had something to do with Sex. ... However, if I’m being honest, what I really want to talk to you about today is none of these things, and still somehow all of them—a topic so wonderfully inane, yet still so hateful. It is, ladies and gentlemen, edible deodorant. Yes, you heard me: edible deodorant.

Fighting "The War on Men."
In which I do my best not to have a conniption over Suzanne Venker & her whole pile of crazy.

I tried hard not to let it get to me. Like, really hard, you guys. Because honestly, when you see an article pop up seven times in fewer than 20 minutes on Facebook, you know it must be a rabble-rouser. Then, of course, when you note that it’s from Fox News, you have to ready yourself for the distinct (and, I would say, likely) possibility that it’s nothing more than a series of provocative non-facts, hardly worth fretting over. And by the time you get around to noticing that it’s called “The War on Men”—once your brain actually processes that this is, verbatim, the oldest, dumbest feminist stereotype—that something like this could even get published, let alone taken seriously, in this day and age— (Pause. Deep breaths.)...

Still Trapped in the Closet.
Why the return of R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet is the best thing since—well—the premiere of Trapped in the Closet.

When I saw the news, I almost spat coffee all over my computer screen. I just about literally jumped for joy. I definitely squealed and jittered and damn near wore out Facebook’s “Share” function. Of course, my emphatic reaction may well have been influenced by the fact that I was on the tail end of a cracked-out three-day study binge—but I’d like to think that tidings of R. Kelly’s groundbreaking hip-hopera, Trapped in the Closet, would provoke a comparable response from anyone who’s experienced even one of its initial 22 glorious chapters.

In addition to the above, I also found time to pen a more somber piece on my experience in Israel this past summer & a tongue-in-cheek romantic advice column, as well as conduct an interview with the (fantabulous, unparalleled) Dita von Teese for our Halloween issue.

&—scene. End shameless self-promotion.

Stay tuned, though, for some (currently half-baked) musings on Girls, gluten, & hair-tearing movie tropes... Until then, team.


Today's Headphone Fodder:

Astro Zombies—The Misfits.

Because there are days on which thrashing incoherently to this song is really, really important. Because a daily guitar-drum sucker punch is life-sustaining & The Misfits are ideal. Because, if I'm honest, this is all I wanted to say, all I gotta do.

A Mistake—Fiona Apple.

So, you know when you hear a song for the first time & you're overcome with a feeling of, "Yep, well, that's my entire brain." Enter, "A Mistake." (Fiona Apple, at it again...) Even to excerpt any of its lyrics would be to do the rest injustice; this song quite simply sums up a large fraction of my (&, I would imagine, others') headspace—& with a jazzy jaunt to boot.

Shady Love—Scissor Sisters (feat. Azealia Banks).

This past winter break, a friend of mine came down to visit from Maine, & one night while out, he deftly threw this song on the speakers, making the whole room swell & sway—& making me, I suppose, the bitch [he] met up in Boston, whom [he] didn't see very often. (Because yes, I did vote for Obama, dance frequently to Madonna, & have been known, in my day, to cut an eighth like a Benihana pro.) The next morning, I woke up with it buzzing in my temples & have been unable to let it go since, especially Azealia's in-your-face refrain. A perfect dance anthem for getting out of ruts—leaping out of them, in fact, jiving oblivious down empty suburban streets through the midwinter thaw.

"The Filmic Equivalent of Vajazzling": A Trying Tale of RomCom Trailers.

As you're probably aware, dear Reader, it's Thursday, & we all know what that means: another lovely issue of The Eye came out today—including, as it does with rather disturbing frequency, another contribution from yours truly.

Unfortunately, as I'm so tied up in the business/organizational end of things, when I write for my favorite publication these days, it's almost always because someone else dropped out & we have some space that needs filling. Today's case was no different, but rather than struggling to fill the 450-word limit, I found myself really getting into the topic—such that I ultimately scribed a 900+ word opus, which then had to be hacked & mercilessly hacked again, like the evil stepsisters' toes in the grimmer Grimm tale, in order to fit its proper place.

So, though I encourage you to check out the version currently online & in print, I've also posted my original below for your reading pleasure. Behold, "Modern Love, Hollywood Style"—or, as I secretly wanted to call it, "The Filmic Equivalent of Vajazzling":

It’s not like we didn’t know what we were getting into. But we were in the mood for a movie, & my mother had just read an article about the new release Friends With Kids—how it was the endeavor of writer/director/star (& Jon Hamm's long-term partner) Jennifer Westfeldt, how the film seemed relatively interesting & Westfeldt relatively savvy & down-to-earth. Plus, it seemed like an appropriate choice for this, our annual mother-daughter trip to Montréal (yes, it’s exactly as adorable as it sounds). Most importantly, we reasoned, this would give us an excuse to look at Jon Hamm’s face for at least the better part of an hour. So, at 2 PM on that fateful Thursday, we made the decision so see a Romantic Comedy at a Canadian multiplex.

Still, only after the crowd (of 11) filed in, the lights dimmed, & the first trailer started to roll did the full gravity of our situation kick in. We were seeing a Romantic Comedy. At a Canadian multiplex. We exchanged a determined cringe, clutched our cup-holder armrests, & braced ourselves for fifteen minutes of trailers advertising some of the most hateful cinematic drivel ever to grace the silver screen.

I don’t mean to sound overdramatic. Okay, maybe I do—but believe me when I say I am, at most, only slightly exaggerating the baffling atrocity of these previews. I mean, surely my adverse reaction was compounded by the sheer volume—one after another after another, like a never-ending freight train of Terrible—but to be perfectly frank, my reaction to "RomCom" in general is not unlike my reaction after attending my first (& only) frat party: People actually think this is awesome?!, intoned with an incredulity hovering somewhere between rage & despair.

It seems that modern Romantic Comedies—as this onslaught of trailers so aptly exemplified—are specifically & infuriatingly marketed to a demographic that I think just simply doesn't exist—or if it does, it's only as an unfortunate result of this kind of marketing. To me, these movies represent the filmic equivalent of vajazzling: yeah, sure, it's something you might entertain—especially after reading Jennifer Love Hewitt's memoir—& you may even enjoy it on occasion, but not because you would ever organically desire this ever, ever, ever. (Unless, of course, you're Jennifer Love Hewitt, in which case I'd be willing to believe you came up with that on your own.) I just find it frustrating that, as an avid moviegoer—&, let's be real, a female moviegoer of marriageable age—I'm constantly being pandered to by a marketing philosophy that does little more than shout "it's pink, there's kissing, get into it!"

But let's get into it, lest you think me some hyper-hip cynic. The first trailer was for a Canadian film, the title of which I really don’t remember, but which we’ll call Boring Man Becomes Slightly Less Boring, because that sums up its utter lack of conceit with room to spare. In short: an American businessman meets a mysterious Canadian lass &, both at a crossroads in their lives, they decide to abscond on a whimsical road-trip through the wilderness. Think wide, scenic shots of wide, scenic landscapes, Guy making some cynical remark, Girl replying with stark genuineness, “But it’s beautiful”—etc. Sound relatively familiar? That’s because what the directors barely even try to conceal is that you’ve seen this movie about 800 times before (anyone familiar with the term “Manic Pixie Dream Girl,” employ it here)—except this time, it's Canadian.

My particular favorite moment: at a diner counter, Guy looks skeptically at his plate as Girl explains, “It’s called poutine.” For those blissfully unaware, “poutine” is a famous Québecois dish, consisting of french fries, cheese curds, & sometimes even foie gras or Canadian deli delicacy “smoked meat,” all slathered in gravy. So, Girl forcing Guy to try some is a typically Manic Pixie action—the equivalent of Zooey Deschannel making Joseph Gordon-Levitt yell “penis” in a park—except instead, she’s asking him to experience a uniquely Canadian heart attack.

Next, we open on Jennifer Garner & Anonymous Attractive Husband receiving unpromising news from a fertility doctor—a predictable premise, as romance has been known to lead to babies, & Jennifer Garner has been known to portray infertile mothers. (Thanks again, Diablo Cody.) Garner & Husband then retreat home & begin drinking (also understandable), at which point he looks into her eyes & says, “Let’s make a baby. Tonight”—a sentiment later complicated by a “Walt Disney presents” titlecard. If you’re thinking (as I was) “This gives a whole new meaning to ‘kiddie porn,’” never fear: apparently, what Hubby means by “make a baby” is “write adjectives on notecards, put them in a box, & bury it out front, in hopes that a mud-covered seven-year-old will show up in our living room tomorrow morning.” Because, of course, that’s what happens.

Yes, following a dark & stormy night, like a gremlin clawing his way from the depths, a little boy named Timothy appears in their home—addressing them casually as “mom & dad," as if by wacky coincidence, they buried their son alive instead of tucking him in. Rather than shoot the creature on sight, they decide to adopt their creepily immaculate conception—& from here, we get a montage of wholesome & heartwarming images, including a number of off-puttingly Jesus-y shots circling around the boy, his eyes closed & arms crucifixion-spread in the middle of a soccer field as inspirational orchestration swells. A final card reveals this masterwork is called The Odd Life of Timothy Green. Understatement of the decade, that.

But wait, there’s more. Indeed, by far the worst was What to Expect When You’re Expecting, as it appears to be 1) a movie based on an instructional pregnancy book, because that’s apparently a thing we’ve allowed to happen; 2) one of those “Let’s round up all of the famous people desperate for a paycheck & parade them past the camera!” ensemble feats, à la Valentine’s Day & its unfortunate cousin New Years Day; & 3) so deeply unfunny-looking as to warrant physical revulsion. Example: the tour-de-force joke—the one worthy of featuring in this, its marketable highlights reel—shows a group of BabyBjörn-clad men pushing strollers in slo-mo, set to hardcore hip-hop. But wait—a man in childcare garb, you say? Surely not, no! That would be like a dog walking on its hind legs! Oh, what a chuckle-worthy notion! Knees slapped all around!—& case squarely in point.

Pale-faced & deeply shaken, my mother & I squeezed hands, unsure if we could bear two hours more of what someone who would ever consider watching those movies ever might find pleasant. However, as it turns out, Friends With Kids is actually kind of excellent. First off, it’s populated with nuanced & realistic characters—friends who banter the same way mine do, getting over-invested in running hypothetical games (“Death by alligator or shark?”) & making just-too-vulgar jokes. Moreover, the Rom woven through this ever-present Com is particularly refreshing—in no way star-cross’d or easy, no character capitulating or suddenly changing heart, allowing each sequence to unfold in unexpected turns. Still, the film's not so busy flouting convention that it forgets to be entertaining—a genuinely pleasant mix of easy laughs & subtle surprises.

Especially as framed by this wasteland of recycled premises & empty one-liners, Westfeldt’s film proved that, plainly put, not all Romantic Comedy is inherently a suckfest. Now it’s up to the rest of the film factories to follow her lead.

Today's Headphone Fodder:

In Every Dream Home a Heartache—Roxy Music.

So, full disclosure: normally, for this section, I don't actually post the single song I've been listening to most that day/week, as 1) it would likely be the same song for posts on end (re: 99% Bowie/Iggy), & 2) it would often be really, profoundly embarrassing (re: Evanesence). Plus, I do genuinely want to recommend music that I think others will dig—that's cutting-edge or otherwise somewhat abnormal, but no so much as to be alienating, etc.

However, today, I'm performing a massive "fuck that" & putting up this song, which I woke up with a sincere yen to listen to & have been repeat-repeat-repeating all day long—one which is deeply bizarre & long & alienating, but also, therefore, deeply excellent. Like so much of Roxy/Ferry/Eno, it's electronic without being subsumed by synthesizers, pleasantly sinister until it breaks, wailing, into guitars. Also, essentially, it's a love song to a blow-up doll, AKA, my plain-wrapper baby—one line boasts, I'll love you 'til death-size—an ever-elaborating series of innuendoes, which culminates delightfully at the surge of all surges: I blew up your body—but you blew my mind. So get into it.

Meat? Cute! (AKA, I Made a Movie.)

So, I think I was set up on a meet-cute by God.

For those not so versed in the shorthand of everyone's favorite filmic genre—that is, of course, the Rom(antic) Com(edy)—"meet-cute" refers to the oft adorable way in which your charmingly flawed protagonist pair first encounter one other. Common examples include mixed-up food orders, shared recognition of a song—&, inevitably, on-street bumpings-into, pratfalls, or other generally unrealistic levels of clumsiness.

The meet-cute is a particularly dangerous stumbling block for screenwriters, too—particularly screenwriters of particularly short films—particularly young student screenwriters of particularly short films who are particularly strapped for ideas. For example, at the end of last semester, some friends & I spent a box of wine trying to come up with a 12-page story for my final assignment, only to realize that every single remotely interesting or comedic idea we had was ultimately a meet-cute—to the point where we resolved to make either one of two films: 1) Meat? Cute!, in which a young-at-heart dreamer, played by Zooey Deschannel, visits a down-on-his-luck butcher, played by Joeseph Gordon-Levitt, at which point the two have profoundly raunchy sex among the carcasses & the film reveals itself to be a hardcore porn; or 2) A Fucking Autobiography of Frida Fucking Kahlo in 12 Fucking Pages Or Less: A Meet-Cute Between Man & God. (This one came toward the very end of the box.)

Still, it's important to note that meet-cutes are commonly regarded as loathsome not only for their ubiquity, but for their ubiquity despite the fact that they are, by definition, deeply & fantastically unrealistic—even, indeed, when you're actually dropped into one.

To set the stage: last Thursday, snagging dinner before an evening class, I sat down at an unoccupied-enough table in one of the school's least economically designed dining facilities with the intention to dine & dash, when I noticed the gentleman sitting a mere few seats away. He was:

1) ...reading the second issue of The Eye, which I had spent until 2 AM the previous night putting together—for which I wrote a short piece on silent film (&, more importantly, calling James Franco both a masturbator & a buffoon).
2) ...sitting by a bundle of filmmaking equipment, which was clearly from the same place I had visited earlier that afternoon to check out my own supply.
3) ...not-so-quietly singing "In Dreams" by Roy Orbison, as used prominently in Blue Velvet, my favorite movie by David Lynch—about whom I had just discovered a fantastically anecdote-worthy video.
4) ...very, very, very, very pretty.

Sure, okay, the whole singing in public thing is indicative of minor insanity, but that's honestly a plus in my book. The long & short of it is, this man was implicitly providing me with a statistical anomaly of possible conversation-starters. For example:

1) So, what do you think? (Pause for look of bepuzzlement.) The magazine. I'm always curious to hear feedback from our readers.
2) Are you shooting this weekend? (Pause for affirmative response.) Me too—what for?
3) Blue Velvet? (Pause for reference recognigtion.) Tell me you've seen the commercials for Lynch's new coffee line. Damn fine.
4) I like your face. Can I put mine close to it, please?

So, which did I use, you ask? Why none, of course, dear Reader. Why, you ask? Who knows.

I could say the sheer number of options was overwhelming (which it was); I could say I had homework to do before class (which I did); that my salad was almost certainly stuck between most of my teeth (also valid); but the plain truth of it is, I am an incorrigible fraidy cat when it comes to making the first move. Indeed, to compensate, I often find myself going to ridiculous extents to create scenarios in which those whom I admire will see me being Effortlessly Attractive & Eminently Approachable, thereby saving me the trouble of instigating. (In this case, that meant prominently laying out marked-up film readings & notebook doodles while craning my neck just so. It was, as usual, unsuccessful; he hummed off without a trace.)

Cut to the short film I was checking out all that equipment in order to make: First Impressions, the product of 72 hours, no lights, & four beautiful (dedicated, talented, wondrous) people. Are there things about it I want to fix? Certainly. Are there things about it I actually can fix & likely will in a soon-to-be-released Special Edition Director's Cut? Probably. Still, for now, it stands: a meet that never quite cutes—or perhaps, the clumsy merger of my (so-called) life & the hastily compiled fictions it tends to produce. Enjoy.

Today's Headphone Fodder:

Lo Dudo—Los Panchos.

As an officially declared Film Studies major, when not making movies, I'm often asked to watch/analyze them—& recently, I was lucky enough to have one of those movies be the beyond brilliant Almodóvar career-maker, Law of Desire. Those who've seen the film may remember the song's prominent (& telling) placement, but for those who haven't, 1) do, & 2) you can still enjoy this trillingly mournful little ditty—even if, like me, you speak only the most cursory approximation of Spanish. All you need to know are those thrice repeated eponymous words: I doubt it, I doubt it, I doubt it (...that you will ever find a love purer than the one you have in me—or something like that).

Cross-Posting A Go-Go.

As aforementioned, these past weeks have been stuffed to bursting with work on the Eye, the (glorious, effervescent) arts & features magazine for which I am now managing editor. At long, long (long) last, at the asscrack of dawn (5:30-something, my foggy memories tell me) this past Thursday, the stars aligned, the dream was realized—&, indeed, the first issue of the magazine was published.

Look how pretty! Click to read the pdf!

Of course, such intense Eyely pride made me remember that I've been an absolute lump when it comes to cross-posting the many words I've logged in its service. So, for any & all interested in what I do with my Clark Kent self—that is, the shy, bespectacled newspaper persona, who fills the hours between my righteous badassery (AKA, Blogsmanship)—here's what I was up to last semester, while, you know, going entirely AWOL hereabouts:

Cinema Verité.
In which I profile the site of my fabulous fall internship—the Maysles Cinema, a nonprofit documentary cinema in Harlem, founded by Al Maysles of Grey Gardens fame—& give it some well-deserved love. (Everyone should go there! Always!)

“Excuse me, can I interest you in some information on upcoming screenings at the Maysles Cinema?” This phrase tumbles out almost mechanically after hours spent repeating it, my handful of fliers dutifully thrust forward into a stream of oncoming pedestrians. As the Cinema’s new graphic design intern, I initially imagined myself more on the crafting than the distribution side of the promotional process—but, after only a short time behind the scenes, I know I’m exactly where I want to be: on the steps of a local Harlem church, making sure everyone I can possibly reach knows about the cutting-edge sociopolitical discourse going on only blocks away at 127th and Lenox...

Let's Bounce.
In which I interview Big Freedia, queen diva extraordinaire of the Bounce scene—which was amazing, because it's Big fucking Freedia, but which was rough, because we had to talk over the phone, & my deafness did not mix well with her somewhat overpowering drawl.

So, I’ve heard that, even within Bounce itself, you’re in a sort of subgenre called “Sissy Bounce”—which I find especially cool because I feel like, in the music industry, there isn’t often a platform for genderqueer artists, and it seems like Sissy Bounce represents a place for that.
Well, we don’t separate it here in New Orleans. There’s no such thing as “Sissy Bounce.” It’s all Bounce music and we have a few gay artists that work within the Bounce culture, but we don’t separate it. That just got misinterpreted through an interview that was done a while back, and they named it “Sissy Bounce” or whatever, but here in New Orleans we don’t separate it at all. Everybody just calls it Bounce music—and, you know, myself [and] Katey Red, we represent a part of that, and we’re gay artists...

From Stage to Screen.
In which I traveled to a swank-ass midtown screening room to see Roman Polanski's latest cinematic foray, Carnage, adapted from Yasmina Reza's Broadway smash The God of Carnage—& then subsequently compared it at length to Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, thus nudging at the question of what makes these simple-seeming plays cinematic.

“I believe,” oozes Christoph Waltz, in the same sinister drawl that earned him an Oscar for Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, “in the God of Carnage—the God whose rule has gone unchallenged since time immemorial.” Dressed as a modern American lawyer in a Paris-shot-for-Brooklyn parlor, he’s lending his villainous appeal to Carnage, the latest cinematic foray of infamous auteur Roman Polanski, which opened this year’s 49th Annual New York Film Festival. The film, based on Yasmina Reza’s Tony Award-winning play The God of Carnage, chronicles a conversation between two bourgeois couples—the Longstreets (Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly) and the Cowans (Waltz and Kate Winslet)—as they confer about a violent dispute between their young sons...

Abnormal Halloween Costumes.
In which I collaborated with the lovely & talented Margaret Boykin to dream up some creative solutions to the year's most intense outfit dilemma.

Sexy Feminist: Think Susan B. Anthony & Simone de Beauvoir…if they were in Mean Girls. These two feminists are already rolling in their graves at the sight of knee-highs and push-ups, so why not bring the empowerment-through-sexuality to a head? Simone loved black turtlenecks—but how about going backless, American Apparel style?...

Untested Development.
In which I ask the question no one wants to ask—that is, "Should there really be an Arrested Development movie? No, but really—think about it..."—&, in the process, drag in David Lynch, Joss Whedon, & Exiled: A Law & Order Movie.

“No, I don’t see it as a series,” acclaimed director Ron Howard says in the final moments of Arrested Development—a surprise cameo that is a typically tongue-in-cheek move for the show he narrated through three seasons. He pauses, fingers tapping. Then: “Maybe a movie?” This hanging question has gone on to haunt diehard fans and entertainment news outlets alike since the show’s 2006 cancellation, through an agonizing five years of will-they-won’t-they pre-production turmoil with enough ups and downs to inspire its own Lifetime miniseries...

Health Over Weight.
In which I rehash America's body image crazy, focusing specifically on the new documentary America the Beautiful 2—whose director, Darryl Roberts, savvily debunks the BMI myth—the Adipositivity Project—whose photographer, Substantia Jones, may just be one of the coolest people in the history of ever—& the controversial children's book Maggie Goes on a Diet—whose author, Paul Kramer, then kindly took the time to yell at me in the comment section.

“So, who do you want to look like?” The question catches me off guard. She smiles sympathetically, folds a stray piece of honey blonde hair behind her ear, and rephrases: “I find it's helpful to have a goal in place—a physical role model.” She grabs a dog-eared People from behind her desk and opens it. “What about Kate Winslet? She’s pretty healthy-looking, don’t you think?” I’ll admit, when I entered this nutritionist's office I was hoping for something a little different—given that none of the previous three had produced lasting results. Despite layers of meticulous meal logs and food pyramids camouflaging my fridge, I remained a significantly overweight (and therefore significantly distraught) 13-year-old—weary of feeling socially inferior to my classmates because I was physically larger. So when the doctor brought out her pictures of Kate, I smiled back and nodded and prayed silently that this plan, please, would stick.

Best of 2011: Best All-Nighter.
In which I recount the "best" of my many hateful study experiences—which can best be summed up by three key terms: "Immanuel Kant," "cockroaches," & "Valentines Day."

As a college student, consummate procrastinator, and incorrigible coffee fiend, I exhibit all possible risk factors for a user and abuser of the All-Nighter. Though my year has thus seen plenty of these harrowing 20-plus hour library entombments, one in particular sticks out: At 10:30-something on a Sunday night in icy February, I enter Butler to begin a five-page essay on the Categorical Imperative of Herr Immanuel Kant, due Monday afternoon...

Then, of course, I also edited a few articles—including one on aging punk rockers (called "Crusty Punks") & another on knitting culture (entitled "Yarns & Recreation").

...&, scene. End shameless self-promotion. (But, seriously, y'all—read the Eye!)


Today's Headphone Fodder:

Right in the Head—M. Ward.

More rumbly, mumbly acoustic boys, perfect for rumbly, mumbly brain-brambled girls, hacking away at keyboards long past the point of sanity.

Misadventures in Goofy Public Photoshoppery.

More Eye-itude—this time, a Blog-to-Blog: give Anneliese a prompt about Paul McCartney & ballet, replace the strictures of print with the intentionally punchy wink of the online division, & behold the bizarre, pictorialized response:

Misadventures in Celebrity Ballet: A Photoshop Fantasy

As you may have seen in recent dance news (assuming, you know, you read dance news), Paul McCartney made headlines for composing his first ever ballet, Ocean’s Kingdom—it’s the gentleman’s “Octopus’s Garden”—and enlisting the help of his daughter, Stella, to design the costumes. Apparently, it’s not considered nepotism when you’re the Walrus.

It was promptly panned with more than a hint of incredulous snark. NY Times reporter Alastair Macaulay points a finger: “We can blame the ballet’s costumes, by Mr. McCartney’s daughter, the fashion designer Stella McCartney: they’re intrusive, unflattering and clichéd.” Macaulay goes on to inquire if Ms. McCartney might require some aloe for that burn...

Today's Headphone Fodder:

Valerie (Live, BBC Sessions)—Amy Winehouse.

For whatever reason, this song has been spinning through my head all morning—now alternating on my newest Spotify playlist with t.A.T.u's cover of "How Soon Is Now?"—stumbling listless through lady voices tracing young men's songs (see: the Zutons original of Winehouse's hit).

Chiding Young Billionaires & Coping Via Playlist.

Good afternoon, Blogosphere. Time for another faithful cross-post from your favorite (& somewhat heinously active) Eye contributor. (I know, I know—I'll get back to my own profanity-laced Bowie-gushing ASAP—but it's at least cool that these are actually published, right?)

Today, it's a bit more of a blip—some humour, if you will—"Seriously, Mark?: An Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg." (Because really now: some bonkers shit is going down on the ol' BookFace, & it is patently unacceptable.)

Mark, we need to talk.

First, it was that awkward second location of Chat. Then, you started sorting my friends into these mysterious “Lists.” Soon enough, my every sidebar was filled with bizarre tidbits of information, ranging from the humiliating (e.g., “More Photos of Person You’re Already Shamelessly Stalking!”) to the just plain hateful (believe it or not, I’d rather not be reminded that, on September 23, 2007, I happened to think my lunch was “awesum!! <3”).

[ Also, check out the lovely FB-reminiscent formatting of the PDF! Page 3. ]

Today's Headphone Fodder:

It's perhaps apt that I'm starting with Mr. Zuckerberg, given that his recent portrayal in The Social Network showed us a young man obsessed with exclusivity—with belonging, being "in"—if only because, this past week, I was subject to the rather unpleasant (but, I'm sure, necessary, adult) experience of being turned down for something to which I applied—in layman's terms: being Rejected.

Sure, it sucked, for lack of a more artful expression—but really, in moments like these, one rarely has the requisite drive to be artful, to do anything more than wallow, situated squarely in a Funk (& not the fun "ph-" kind, like Fergie sings about—this is some we know Major Tom's a junkie shit).

Still, there comes a point when enough is enough—when you can't deny that the sun's still rising & personal rainclouds seem increasingly ridiculous—when you have to realize that, honestly now, you are a Grown-Ass Woman (because, regardless of personal gender expression, in this moment, we are all Grown-Ass Women), & it's long past time to scrub off stray eyeliner, pull up your pantyhose, & Make a Fucking Playlist.

So, here it is—for any & all of us who've felt that castaway sting, who've muddled endless through those infamous Five Stages & landed, at last, upon:

10-5-11: Acceptance.
[ ^ Click to hear the whole thing! Via YouTube! In order! Continuous-like! ^ ]

Rejected—Flight of the Conchords.
Get Over It—Ok Go.
Wandering Star—Portishead.
Oh! You Pretty Things—David Bowie.
Eleanor Rigby (4 Centers Dubstep Remixxx)—The Beatles.
Shut Me Up—Mindless Self Indulgence.
It's Alright, Baby—Komeda.
The Passenger (Live)—Iggy Pop.
Angeles (Live)—Elliott Smith.
You Oughta Know—Das Racist.
Special—Garbage.
Golden Hours—Brian Eno.
She Hates Me—Puddle of Mudd.
Good Day—The Dresden Dolls.
Your Name is Jake—Dr. Skinnybones. [** Not on YouTube, but FREE-DOWNLOADABLE on BANDCAMP.]
Whip My Hair (Drowning in Blood)—Skull Tape (Willow Smith cover).
It's Not—Aimee Mann.
It Ain't Gonna Save Me—Jay Reatard.
Lithium—Nirvana.
Forest Whitaker—Brother Ali.
Emerge—Fischerspooner.
So What—P!nk.

[ NOTE: Though, of course, these are meticulously organized for your listening pleasure into an 80-minute whole, I would like to single out "Your Name is Jake" by Dr. Skinnybones—not only because it is not, as you may have noted, included in the YouTube playlist—but moreover, because it's a delightful new addition to my collection, a perfect anthem for room-bound slam-dance comebacks. ]

"Carpet-pissing, kidnapping, pornographers, & nihilism" (is a phrase I got published. You're Welcome.)

Ack!—a few days late on re-posting this one. It's this new schedule of mine—limbs churning tireless like a hamster on a caffeine drip—but buoyed, always, by the knowledge that I'm doing what I love (designing, film-learning, tofu-cooking—all them essentials of my awkwardly burgeoning Grown-Up-itude). Who needs sleep when you have iCal, says I.

Anyhow, to counterbalance my somewhat manic contentment, here's a few paragraphs of Eye-ly blather on that beloved Slacker extraordinaire, Mr. Geoffrey "The Dude" Lebowski:

“In wayfarer’s worlds out west was a man,
A man I come not to bury, but to praise,
His name was Geoffrey Lebowski call’d, yet
Not called, excepting by his kin.”

Thus begins Adam Bertocci’s “The Two Gentlemen of Lebowski,” a re-working in full Shakespearean verse of the Coen brothers’ 1998 cult classic The Big Lebowski—that now infamous tale of carpet-pissing, kidnapping, pornographers, and nihilism, with a few marmots thrown in for good measure. It was the cover of this unlikely book—a be-sunglassed Bard holding a bowling ball the way Hamlet might a skull—that first caught my eye upon entering The Little Lebowski, a small store near Washington Square Park (215 Thompson St., to be exact) entirely dedicated to the vending of all things Dude...

Today's Headphone Fodder:

Growin' Up—David Bowie (Bruce Springsteen cover).

Okay. Um— Okay. I don't quite think I can even begin quantify my feelings about the existence of this recording. What I can tell you is that, a week or so ago, mixing & mingling at one of many year-starting galas, I fell into a rather serious Bowie Conversation with some young gents—during which I jumped, squealed, danced, gestured vigorously, & at least twice interrupted to remark how awesome it was to nerd out like this—you know, all those charming, spastic Bowiephilisms that guarantee me more mental health referrals than phone numbers. Anyhow, in the course of our discourse, this recording was mentioned, &—after an incredulous squeal & jump & a few much-needed hours of sleep—I finally tracked it down.

This is, no question, one of my favorite songs of all time—note it, quoted, in the first line of my wee tongue-in-cheek Bio (to the right)—& the fact that Bowie liked it enough to cover it— His voice, scratching & cracking over the lyrics— To feel that kind of connection to your heroes— The same Bruce Springsteen song! I— We— Garble— Squeal— Melting.

Honestly, though:

1) Pick an artist whom you idolize to a sickening degree.
2) Pick another artist whom you regard as a sort of nostalgic, not-quite-guilty pleasure (e.g., inextricably associated with driving around in your old car with your mother)—of whom you have no real reason to believe Artist 1 is a fan.
3) Imagine that Artist 1 covers, not just any song by Artist 2, but the song—not some obvious chart topper, but an identity-defining B-side that you love, intensely.

Now, try to contain yourself while writing about it prose English.

In Which I Rise From the Dead (Or, Well, Hiatus) to Talk About Zombie Lit.

Oh hey there. Not like it's been three months or anything...

I know, Reader, I know—but times are tough: buried beneath mounds of camp directing, now giving way to heaps of schoolwork, I hardly have time to breathe, let alone weave together complex musings on the eminent hotness of Michael Fassbender (the upcoming topic in my ever-accumulating pop-arsenal—get psyched).

Still, there are some chances that are too good to pass up: when The Eye contacted me towards the end of summer with a pitch about the rising popularity of zombie literature, despite being so thoroughly burned by them in the past (oh, Annaliese & her morays...), I snatched at the opportunity to muse about the scribed undead.

The piece was published today, & I'm happy to report that this time around, they were generously faithful to my original copy—only a couple of meaning-altering edits ("years-long" to "year-long," "fake-bloody" to "fake-blood," repeating the word "faux" twice in two sentences, etc.). Moreover, speaking from a place of giddy narcissism, I'm almost happier to report that I've now officially gotten my picture in the paper—& blood-drenched to boot. I expect a call from Hollywood any day now. (Many thanks to Adam Hawthorne & Steve McGowan for taking the photos!)

So, without further ado, here it is: my torn, reanimated hand grasping from out the muck of these past inactive months. Enjoy.

They came in hordes: limping lopsided through Boston’s poshest districts, trailing clothing strips and rubber limbs, snarling peppermint-flavored blood at unsuspecting brunchers—because, well, there are worse ways to spend a Saturday. These hundreds of brave and faux-battered souls were none other than the eager participants in Boston’s seventh annual Zombie March, an occasion for any ex-makeup artist or horror enthusiast to break out some spirit gum and stroll brokenly through the streets. As startling as a mob of faux blood-drenched adults hobbling through Sephora might be, the existence of the march itself should come as no grand shock, if only because, in recent years, zombies have been lurching their way into every aspect of our pop culture with gusto—especially, and perhaps surprisingly, onto the literary scene...

(Here's the downloadable PDF—pages 12 & 13.)

Today's Headphone Fodder:

Okay, this officially sucks, because my musical taste has gone through several full cycles these past mute months, such that the thought of summing it all up with one song is daunting if not impossible. As much as I would like to take the next hour to put together a downloadable ZIP file playlist (à la "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday"), the aforementioned heaps of homework beckon—so, if you'll permit, I'm going to put that task aside & trust you to understand that the following is, true to its name, the music of today & today alone. That said, the track currently gracing these staticking white earbuds is:

Gronlandic Edit—Of Montreal.

Bopping but unconventional, like the best output of this particular glam-pop outfit, this is one of those songs that manages to sum my life up perfectly, in lyric & tone: daylight, I'm so absentminded, nighttime meeting new anxieties... An upbeat ditty dipping its toes just far enough into the profound, it's the perfect song for chowing down film theory, for nagging yourself out of bed to attend 10 AM lectures thereupon—for buoying the hazy, aimless summer drives I'm doomed, for now, to miss.

Some Unexpected Motivation.

Dear Internet,

Though it's (hopefully) common knowledge among all y'all dearest Readers of mine that my musings here are purely recreational, casual, not meant to garner fame or fortune—hence the sporadic posting, ample ampersands, & ubiquitous use of terms like "fuck" & "donkey balls"—I do still enjoy, on occasion, perusing my viewership statistics. Blogspot is kind enough to provide this feature—"Stats"—that tells you your number of views, search terms through which people have found your page, even from what country & operating system these hits originate (in my case, a bizarrely high influx from PC users from Denmark).

More often than not, the information is banal, perhaps worth a giggle, but today—well—let me just say this: you know you're doing something right when your three most-searched terms to date are, in order, "gigantic breasts," "famous serial killers," & "Iggy Pop bleeding from chest."

So, in conclusion, thank you, Danish porn surfers. You love me. You really, really love me.

Hearts, donkey balls, & truly gigantic breasts,
Ann-uh-lee-suh.

P.S. Stay tuned for some reckoning on two upcoming TV series...


Today's Headphone Fodder:

Superheroes—Ruth's Hat (Rocky Horror Picture Show cover).

It's no secret that Richard O'Brien (AKA, the guy who comes out of the toilet in Spice World—or, for those not living in my brain, Riff Raff) wrote a number of Rocky Horror's songs prior to the play's inception, before Brad & Janet & Transylvanian transvestites—which means that, though they work seamlessly enough within the musical, they also sound especially fantastic when performed by a band, stand-alone & punked out. (Please, for the love of all that is holy, check out The Rocky Horror Punk Rock Show—mentioned previously here.) "Superheroes" is definitely one such song—that two-step wail of the guitar, lyrics brimming with neo-Nietzchean angst—&, at least in my mind, the shouting of "stumble, stumble, fall!" after each line of the second verse, as besooted Janet can't quite keep her footing in the post-rocket mansion ruins. What the cover does so brilliantly, though, is bring this sentiment to a boil—implicitly beg you to dance through the bleak pronouncements, thrash to the bitter end—to stumble-stumble-fall, hard, with intent.

Morays are eels. Mores are conventions. Which Anna Nicole defies.

Here it is, in all its typo-wrought glory: my article about the Anna Nicole Smith opera, committed, ever, to newsprint, & to the Eye website.

... Though Smith did enjoy a fair amount of professional success, looking back, one might call her a model the way John Wilkes Booth was an actor: chances are, when you say her name, the images conjured aren’t her tasteful black and white clothing ads. Rather, her legacy lives on in the rainbow of terrycloth tracksuits from her short-lived E! reality show—or the stale beige of courtroom footage, as we watched her fight for over a decade to gain retroactive inclusion in Marshall’s will.

It would seem, then, that upon learning this tawdry tale had transcended to the operatic stage, one might respond with a bemused head tilt, a raised eyebrow—all told, a general expression of: come again?

But wait—there's more: interviews with seasoned operati, a double-entendre invocation of molotov & alcoholic cocktails, overwrought metaphors about wax wings—&, of course, the eels. All them sexual morays...

Love, ever & on,
Your Faithful Annaliese


Today's Headphone Fodder:

Rolling in the Deep (Jamie XX Remix, feat. Childish Gambino)—Adele.

This track combines two new loves of mine:

1) Adele's latest album, 21, which is packed to bursting with excellent songs (especially, "Rumour Has It" & "Set Fire to the Rain")—each featuring her almost genre-less soulful crooning, here reinvigorated by a light-yet-limb-rocking backbeat.

2) Childish Gambino, AKA Donald Glover of Derrick Comedy & Community fame. Flying in the face of many a celebrity-gone-musician before him, Glover is actually, well, pretty damn good. Other favorites of mine include "I Be On That" & "Freaks & Geeks"—both speedy & nerdy & pun-ridden, colliding like the best of lyrics. (A somewhat guilty favorite: e.e. cummin' on her face—now that's poetry in motion.)

&, just for fun: