The Friday Article Roundup
Check out the hottest, wettest pop culture writing of the week.
This week, you will fall into bed with:
The FAR thanks C.D. Ploughman and Bridgett Taylor for their hot and heavy contributions! Send your own picks throughout the next week to magpiesfar [at] gmail, post articles from the past week in the comments for discussion, and have a Happy Friday!
At Defector, Ralph Jones has the biggest interview get of the year: Willem Dafoe’s stunt penis (and the man it’s attached to):
Antichrist came near the end of Horst Stramka’s adult film career—he stopped working in porn in 2012. A German company got in touch with him to ask if he would be, as he put it, “all right to bring my penis in the scene.” Stramka, who had been doing porn for about 15 years, replied, “Come on, this is my job.” There doesn’t seem to have been an audition process, and Stramka found himself on the set of a very different kind of film altogether, paid 900 Euros a day for having considerably less sex than he would normally.
Evan Ross Katz interviews showrunner Jacob Tierney about the smash queer hockey miniseries Heated Rivalry:
These are people learning about each other and their relationship by fucking. That’s how they’re understanding each other. It’s how they play out their dynamics. It’s the only time, especially in the first two episodes, that they’re not lying to each other, that they’re not doing boisterous dumb boy stuff and being like, “Fuck you, fuck you.” This is when they get vulnerable with each other. This is when they get real. And then the other thing that was important to me is that like… why shouldn’t we get some horny good sex for gay people on TV?
Olly Hawes writes for The Guardian about getting stabbed in a performance of Julius Caesar — for real:
As everything went black before another scene came on, I pulled out the knife. That was when my heart started to race. Feeling strangely clear-headed, I rushed off stage into the foyer, my left leg going numb. I told the venue workers to call an ambulance. There was still a quarter of the play to go, and the performance continued, the audience and cast blissfully unaware. Even now, I don’t know what happened to the knife.
Alex Lei examines why A House Of Dynamite is very much not the movie of the moment for Splice Today:
There’s a larger problem with this kind of liberal-minded analysis of systems failure in that it necessarily presents a nostalgia for a system which never existed outside of The West Wing….Bigelow’s film posits a terror of “what if the military can’t save us?” through unnerved bureaucrats, coldly murderous generals, and a conflicted president (played by Idris Elba in serviceable if atavistic character). It’s not really a question I’d even think to ask given the completely hostile stance the government has taken against the people in America since January, while all that state apparatuses have done is protect the collective looting of the public sector while the hucksters, pedophiles, dilettantes, and dumbasses that are the face of the administration make enough spectacle that no one can really keep track of all of it or do anything about it even if they could.
David C. Porter writes at his substack about the centering steadiness of the obscure:
The incomprehensibly rapid rate at which culture morphs, mutates, and transforms itself now, of course, always outstrips the pace at which this homogenization occurs, but you can’t keep running forever. Sooner or later, you will either have to reconcile yourself to it, or build fortifications capable of weathering its assault – and there are no better, I believe, than those of continued, stubborn interest in things you have no “reason” to be interested in, in things which you gain no discernible benefit, social or financial, from being invested in. To be interested in records no one listens to, books no one reads, films no one watches, is to resist the encroachment of this especially pernicious kind of living death.
And for Hell World, David Roth considers what he has in common with an exhibit of Rob Zombie’s pop culture-saturated artwork:
There is a version of these paintings that I could do with the stuff that crowds my own brain—an endless parade of Mets grounding out to second base while the Night Court theme blares and the cast of Homicide: Life On The Street looks on—and you could surely do one with the stuff in yours. Like in a hoarder’s house, little pathways emerge between the wobbling stacks of stuff that you’ve decided to keep, or just been unable to throw out. You will still need to move around in there, but the pathways get narrower as the things pile up.
Tags for this article
More articles by Dave Shutton
The Friday Article Roundup
There's still time to experience the best pop culture writing of the week.
Double Features
Family heirlooms loom large in Father Mother Sister Brother and Vulcanizadora.
Double Features
Moving in time with One Battle After Another and Caught By The Tides.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Babylon 5, Season Three, Episode Sixteen, “War Without End: Part One”
This is a rare case of the show’s big reveal not landing great, not because the information doesn’t own (it does) but because I saw this coming a mile away when the reveals tend to be less predictable. The best part of this, aside from Sheridan’s return, is the glimpse we have of the future and the possible ending of Londo’s story.
Great line: “Very sad life. Probably have a very sad death. But at least there’s is symmetry.”
Part of the twist is that this particular sci-fi genre tends to one thing, but the overall execution here is still very well done. And yeah, the future is nicely dark and complicated, it isn’t the threat of what happens if our gang fails, it’s the threat of what happens next.
Pennies from Heaven
For Movie Club. I didn’t know anything about this movie’s reputation, and the brief blurb led me to believe it would be a tale of embracing escapism in dark times. Which, uh, it sort of was. But not at all the way I imagined! This is capital-b Bleak and Bitter, with Steve Martin’s character not being a down-on-his-luck sad-sack so much as a man full of ravening selfishness (and lust: this is all very horny in a depressing way). His most truly redemptive moments–and this captures the thrust of the film perfectly–come when he buys lunch for a guy who’s worse off than he is (and then that guy rapes and murders a woman, which Martin hangs for) and when he agrees to fake happiness so the girlfriend who’s life he ruined won’t leave him. Wonderful jukebox musical numbers with impressive, elaborate staging; wonderful work from Martin, Bernadette Peters, and Jessica Harper. Strong stuff, but highly recommended if you’re in the mood for that kind of thing.
Terror Train
Classic slasher on a train, with great use of the costume party setup. This is gorgeously shot, because oh yeah, the cinematographer also worked on Barry Lyndon, The Shining, etc., and then turned all those skills to a low-gore Canadian genre flick that’s actually pretty good at building suspense. But the visuals are the best part. Superb lighting and some really well-composed shots.
Really need to check out Pennies from Heaven, I stumbled across the trailer a while ago and it looks like a hell of a thing.
Capital B Bleak and Bitter is right for Pennies From Heaven, I saw it close to two decades ago and haven’t revisited because man do you have to be in the right mood. Besides the text being a downer I think the movie really fucks with the viewer on a deeper level — “this is all very horny in a depressing way” is a big part of it, I think a lot of musicals look at thwarted desire but in a way that keeps the desire relatively clean and good in and of itself; it’s a lot rougher and closer here. And the other big part is the lip synching — musicals are fantasies but they are indulgent of the fantasy, here the distance between dream and reality may be collapsed in image but is blasting you in the ears with the music, so clearly recordings of others instead of the characters’ inner expressions. They can’t get there even for a song, they never could. Bleak And Bitter!
Witness for the Prosecution (1957) – Another old friend revisited, and Charles Laughton as London’s greatest and most cantankerous barrister never gets old. Interesting to watch this after weeks of The Practice and see the very different, very theatrical UK courtroom presented here. I have no idea how accurate any of it is, but clearly the wigs are still a thing. Will forever wonder how much better this might have been with William Holden instead of Tyrone Power, or maybe his star power would have added too much.
The Practice, “The Honorable Man” – The title refers to Eugene, once again suffering a professional and personal crisis when defending a man accused of murder and rape, a man who sweats he only performed necrophilia with a body he happened to find. While we’ve covered this ground before with Eugene, Steve Harris still sells it, and the script makes it abundantly clear the defendant is a terrible person and doesn’t play any of this for crude laughs. Meanwhile, Jimmy defends an old friend who revealed an employee had AIDS, and is saddened to find that the friend did this as a ploy to make a gay man quit. We get the full Jimmy here, first using a pretty homophobic closing because he knows that will work, and then calling out his friend’s homophobia because Jimmy has a gay mother and no longer sees the world that way. It’s a bit ham fisted, but it fits the character. And it is nice to see that two years later Jimmy accepts who his mom is, even if he is still sometimes sleazy.
Witness for the Prosecution is such a pleasure. The kind of movie I want to rewatch whenever I think about it.
Outside the Law – a late-period noir about counterfeiting, with a guy paroled from the army to help the investigation after his war buddy (who was part of the counterfeiting ring) gets murdered. This is mostly Solid rather than Spectacular but it does a really good job blending the detailed investigation / procedural stuff with some personal matters, like the head cop being the protagonist’s estranged father and a potential romance with the victim’s widow. I ended up liking it quite a bit, even if it’s lacking a classic premise or set piece to make it really memorable.
Twin Peaks, episode 3 – fancied some damn good coffee and I think this was the right spot to drop back in after rewatching the first couple of episodes after Lynch died. This is a superb episode, containing the Tibetan suspect investigation method and the first major dream sequence. As ever, one of the best things ever made to just throw on and soak in the vibes.
No, I’m sorry, there is no way Outside The Law is not a late 90s movie starring Steven Segal, please stop with these obvious false shenanigans.
There seems to be at least SEVEN movies called Outside the Law and somehow Steven Seagal isn’t in a single one of them. He’s ABOVE the law, not outside it!
This is absolutely something Charles Laughton from Witness For The Prosecution needs to weigh in on, how the metaphysical and physical relation between man and law overlap and the implications thereof.
That Heated Rivalry show! It’s a lot of fun. I’m so glad Tierney is seeing such success in a show he fought to make.
Started Man on the Inside S2, which is putting the lead in a believable situation and also in love. I’m not sure it’s working as well as last season, but it’s a lot of fun.
Otherwise not much, mostly some Chopped.
I really need to watch Heated Rivalry! I’ve seen so many Tumblr gifsets at this point.
I think it’s really fun!
What did we read?
8-Bit Theater, Strips 0360-0390, Brian Clevinger
Plotwise, the quest for the Earth Orb becomes chasing down a villain that stole it; this initially appears to be a vampire named Vilbert and turns out to be his lich father. Vilbert is a parody of self-important goth teenagers; there ends up being this funny contrast when Vilbert has incompetent poetry but his father’s lichy ominous dialogue is taken totally seriously. In fact, the major new element here is the story suddenly, seemingly, taking itself totally seriously; the lich kills Black Mage, causing a dramatic break in Fighter’s character.
Except two things: one, this is merely an extension of the comic using serious setup for stupid jokes, and two, this turns out to be setups for stupid jokes. Fighter has a dramatic flashback to his first meeting with BM which turns out to be as dumb as anything else in the comic; BM himself wakes up in Hell and riffs on that for a while. I think flashbacks definitely work in comedy in a way they don’t in drama because a) comedy relies on contrast more than drama does and b) comedy has an inherently intellectual and distant attitude about it.
It’s hard to explain; comedy is a jolting of one’s sense of the world. At its best, there are two things happening – something happens that shouldn’t, but then you think about it and realise it makes sense (even when you’re not really thinking about it). It’s when the world is logical even though it shouldn’t be. You’re given a sense of how the world works and then that sense is tripped up, but you realise this new sense of the world makes more sense. Flashbacks can work with that; they explain the world a little more with a little more information.
“Yeah, sometimes he spouts random strings of words. It’s all quite random and meaningless.” / “Even though that was a complete sentence and it fit perfectly in context.” / “… Yes.”
King Steve: “Did I ever tell you about the time I built this castle by hand?” / “It’s 400 years old, Dad.” / “Yes, yes. I designed it that way, you know.”
BM justified potentially committing a brutal murder on the basis that it would be a practice session, which doesn’t count.
“Ready?” / “I was born ready.” / “I was born naked and screaming.” / “And if all goes to plan, you’ll die like that too.” I have quoted this incredibly frequently.
BM is exposed to a pun from Fighter so dumb that he loses his mind temporarily.
There’s a gag where a flaming cow is accidentally dropped on a Hindu vegetarian picnic.
“Do you know what you’re doing, RM?” / “Why should that stop me?”
When BM is in Hell, he meets a demon represented by a photo of a tabletop mini.
Slowly but steadily making my way though A Heart Full of Headstones, the next to most recent Inspector Rebus novel. It’s at once entertaining and very familiar ground. I don’t think Rankin has anything new to say about his cast, Edinburgh, or the criminal justice system, but Rebus remains good company.
Also making my way through a collection of baseball reportage by Roger Angell circa 1972-76. Interesting stuff both as a glimpse of what the game was and how it was reported, and of the start of my memories of the sport. And yes, Angell is as literary and literate as you might expect from a sportswriter who moonlighted as the fiction editor for The New Yorker.
I picked up a couple books by Angell when they were on sale after I read that biography of Katharine S. White (his mother) and collection of essays by E.B. White (his stepfather). Gotta get around to them: baseball is the sport I most understand.
I read the memoir he wrote fairly late in his (very long) life and he is a strong stylist even when not writing about baseball.
Boys of Summer is one of those stone classics that everyone agrees on and they’re right. Fantastic book not just about baseball but about youth/nostalgia and extremely rad newspapering in the 1940s.
You Like It Darker, by Stephen King
Good collection from the late-era King: some pieces are quite slight and not as tightly written as they should be, but “Rattlesnakes” feels like vintage King: tense, scary, and beautifully and vividly written in his distinct style. “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream” and “The Answer Man” were also highlights. King has always done some of his best work at short lengths, and as a longtime fan, I honestly feel kind of emotional about him getting a couple of really strong at-bats this late in the game.
King of Ashes, by S.A. Cosby
Cosby comes back strong after the slightly weak All the Sinners Bleed. I always love a crime novel that’s also a tragedy, and if the shape of this particular one is predictable, that’s not a problem. And the specifics–the business of running a crematory, the family trauma and guilt, the background of the town and community–are strong and particular and deeply felt. Excellent, smart, genuinely frightening antagonists, too.
Rules of the Road, by Joan Bauer
Reread of a childhood favorite. This is one of the building blocks that led to me loving Studs Terkel’s Working, because here we have a book that’s partly about genuinely loving shoe-selling as a vocation. I like books with lots of concrete nouns.
I am currently reading Crosby’s Blacktop Wasteland and digging it a lot, it’s my first Crosby and apparently I’ve slept on this guy. Similar pros so far, excellent specifics of setting/action and this gives weight to a basic story that might have been told a lot but is still compelling.
I don’t think I’d ever read a great car chase before Blacktop Wasteland. Really well-done. Razorblade Tears, his second novel, might be even better.
It is good to know that King’s miscellaneous drawer still has a lot of good stuff in it. I agree that “Rattlesnakes” was the highlight, uncanny and unsettling in a way that snuck up on me. I also love that the book is ridiculously long with at least two and maybe three novellas you could build a hefty collection around. I’m sure some noob at the publisher sent a note about maybe we should spread our remaining King out a bit and King sent a reply telling him not to worry, there’s more where that came from.
Bartemius, by Jonathan Stroud — this is a prequel to a well-regarded YA series I have not read, starring one of the main characters, a sassy djinn. It is probably not great I was hoping for this guy to get severely hurt through large chunks of the novel. This is just not my cup of tea in general but Stroud’s voice as Bartemius is often too openly arch — the character is the narrator and thus the voice of the many Pratchett-style footnotes and that technique works a lot better when 1. it is Pratchett the writer and 2. Pratchett the author, an omniscient observer, laying down the wit. But the YA style is also not really my thing, although this is within adult sensibilities the bluntness and overexplaining gets old. Not bad but not something I’ll pursue.
The Manchurian Candidate, which is dated and weird and misogynistic in a really weird way. Compelling, though.
Now finishing up Iron Widow, which is about misogyny in a much more blatant way. I was about 80% through and realized that this is setting up a sequel and there’s really not enough room for a satisfying ending. Welp. It’s been good, though!
Anyone planning to see Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair? Despite my documented QT fandom I had turned my nose up at the idea — I think the bifurcation of the story is dramatically useful and the two parts are different in style, tone, and theme. Plus I don’t tend to enjoy artists revising their work, especially in film, which is an inherently collaborative medium. (And Tarantino is an artist to benefits from restrictions.)
And all of that is still true, except I saw a trailer for it yesterday and now I’m champing at the bit to go see it in 70mm. I don’t think I’m going to get to it this weekend, because I already have plans to see a recital by classical pianist Benjamin Grosvenor — so, you know, very much the same sort of thing.
I considered it but 4.5 hours to a movie I only enjoy rather than love is not a commitment I can make. Probably would enjoy it, but probably would choose to try two other movies if I were gifted the time.
Year of the Month update!
This December, we’ll be taking pitches on anything from 1948, like these movies, albums, and books.
Dec. 18th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Rope
Dec. 20th: Lauren James: The Lottery
Here’s how we’re wrapping up this month:
Nov. 28th: Gillian Nelson: Legend of the Three Caballeros
And here’s the movies, albums, books, TV, and games from 1985 for you to write about next January.
Jan. 2nd: Gillian Nelson: Return to Oz
Jan. 5th: Tristan J. Nankervis: Rambo: First Blood Part II
Jan. 9th: Gillian Nelson: Advice on Lice
Jan. 16th: Gillian Nelson: The Wuzzles/The Gummi Bears
Jan. 19th: Tristan J. Nankervis: The Breakfast Club
Jan. 23rd: Gillian Nelson: The Golden Girls
Wait a minute, Jacob Tierney made Heated Rivalry? I might have to check it out then.