Welcome to the inaugural edition of 12 Days of Highly Tolerable Holiday Movies, because Jingle All the Way and all its ilk should burn in hell. I’m kicking things off with a little Better off Dead.
Better Off Dead (Savage Steve Holland, 1985). Maybe some forgot this was a holidayish film, but I did not. How could anyone forget when you have the following scene?
“Chrissssstmassss!”
Lane, I think it’d be in my best interest if I dated somebody more popular. Better looking. Drives a nicer car.
(Beth Truss. And we’re all like that, each one of us.)
What do you do when the center of your universe walks away?
A teenager has to deal with his girlfriend dumping him among family crises, homicidal paper boys, and a rival skier.
(the imdb.)
Absolutely sick pyjamas. On the kid, not on David Ogden Stiers. Scooter Stevens, who plays the lineless younger brother, did some television roles and played “Bonnie’s Date” in She’s Out of Control. That’s his final credit, so I think it’s safe to say he went on to a life of education and handsomer-than-average anonymity.
Though his voice work in this film was dubbed by Rich Little, Yuji Okumoto, the Howard Cosell brother, has gone on to act his ass off. Seriously, you give that guy a spin on the imdb and he has a credit or ten for, like, every year since this movie was released. Very impressive. He was the one I thought was cuter. So I’m pleased. Brian Imada, who plays his brother, has done a crapload of stunt work and will be appearing in utility stunt capacity in the upcoming Green Hornet film, which is getting its own post soon as a “Hot Man Bein’ Hot” for the new Kato. Ow! I like Asian dudes. Blame Sulu and alert the media.
Featuring marvelous Curtis Armstrong as Lane’s best friend, the eccentric Charles De Mar. Doin’ whippits and trying to get a line on nosespray in a top hat.
Suicide is never the answer, little trooper.
Curtis Armstrong is so good at conveying the “cool” geek. Total old school unlikely G. In fact, I do believe he was the second subject in that category.
Steve Holland: That part when Lane does this in the garage is true. I went into the garage, and I put an extension cord on a pipe, and I’m on a garbage can, and I’m thinking, “Should I do this? Maybe this isn’t a good idea.” Anyway, it was a plastic garbage can, and my weight just, like, crashed through it, and I fell, and the pipe broke!
And it starts pouring water everywhere. And I’m basically in a garbage can, drowning. And my mom comes in, and my mom starts yelling at me for breaking a pipe, which is what any mom would do.
So I started writing down stupid ways to kill yourself that would fail after that, and I put them in sort of a diary. And that diary kind of became Better Off Dead.
(“Better Off Dead – Savage Steve Holland.” Awesome interview and article on The Sneeze.)
It’s got raisins in it. You like raisins.
Lane’s suicide stunts smack a little of Harold and Maude, but only a little. Certainly Jenny Meyer is worlds away from Vivan Pickles. Taking it down the very absurd road carries it far enough from Harold and Maude that it becomes apples and oranges (with raisins). Mainly.
Holland’s vision of the cafeteria as the intersection of absurd personal fantasy time and a rigidly enforced caste system is a standout in a decade that brought us dozens of shudder-inducingly accurate cafeteria scenes (I think of Sixteen Candles, when Molly Ringwold spots Jake Ryan, dumps her tray, and runs: “I can’t let him know I eat,” or Martha Dumptruck from Heathers).
Lane, I’m thinking about asking out Elizabeth.
R.I.P., Vincent Schiavelli. A great character actor and kickass chef.
Charles de Mar has a hand in a jar. Say it three times fast and Curtis Armstrong will appear! He currently voices Steve’s friend Snot on American Dad.
I love the animation Scooter Stevens brings to his role — it’s a shock to realize Badger has no speaking parts, yes? His eyes on the “Trashy Women” book … priceless.
One of the taglines for this film is: Insanity doesn’t run in the family, it gallops. This is a reference to Arsenic and Old Lace, where the line went, “Darling, insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.”
During a screening of Better Off Dead, John Cusack stormed out after twenty minutes, saying, “You’ve ruined my career!” He allegedly hated and despaired of the film, and told Holland, “I will never trust you as a director ever again, so don’t speak to me.”
I’m guessing that the mad science at Pig Burger was one of the scenes he found unpardonable, cause I guess if you are trying to be a cool cat, it could be perceived as kind of cheesey and out of place. But, hey, what a great anticipation of Igor. Who knew? Because that entire movie was insanely cheesey and out of place. I hold children’s movies to a very high standard and I don’t brook a bunch of shit, sorry.
And Cusack went ahead and allowed Hot Tub Time Machine to refer to the film, so perhaps time has softened his view. Or money. But most likely time, I’m just sure.
I have great fear of tools. I once made a birdhouse in woodshop and the fair housing committee condemned it. I can’t.
“I cannot do it” is your middle name. I think all you need is a small taste of success, and you will find it suits you.
[Lane’s] father is so stumped in trying to understand the confusing habits and behavior of his teenage son (and, at one point, is temporarily convinced Lane is using drugs) that he clumsily attempts repeatedly to interfere in Lane’s love life.
(the wiki)
For half a second, the q-tip face makes me like John Cusack and start to giggle, and then I remember all the reasons I’m mad at him and I wipe the smile off my face. Spiders in the mail? So immature.
It’s kind of an interesting phenomenon. Any actor wants to play the cool guy. So playing the role of a borderline mental dork in the movie is not necessarily your first choice as an actor, however, in a way you’re kind of creating it yourself.
It’s not like you’re being made fun of, you’re making fun of yourself by creating this persona. So it didn’t bother me a lot since I was playing a character who was so far away from me.
(Interview with Dan “Ricky” Schneider. The Sneeze.)
This is similar to the kind of present-giving I did one Christmas as a child. I wrapped up things we already had and was surprised when my parents were clearly feigning their enthusiasm. I think it was very zen: I considered all of our possessions to be gifts.
Savage Steve Holland: And every day we were going, “This is hilarious. Am I wrong?” And it was like, every day anything we shot was really funny. So at my first test screening… I’ll never forget it, the movie was like five or seven minutes longer, and the audience reaction was pretty good, but it wasn’t that good.
And I remember one guy walking out, and for some reason he knew me, and he goes, “Hey, better luck next time.”
And I’m like, “Oh shit, I’m doomed.” It really hurt.
The Sneeze: Do you know where he is today?
SS: He’s probably running Paramount with my luck.
The Sneeze: I was just hoping he was homeless.
SS: No, because mean people always get the good jobs.
I’ve been going to this school for seven years. I’m no dummy. I know high school girls.
You’ll make a fine little helper. What’s your name?
Charles de Mar!
Not you, geek. Her.
John will never talk about Better Off Dead, and One Crazy Summer, and I read something recently where he called me “the director.” He wouldn’t use my name, and he said, “the director wanted to do absurdist comedy and that’s just not the thing I like to do,” or something like that.
I feel like I let him down. And it totally surprises me so much because I have to say the most important person to me about that movie, was John. I really wanted him to love it as much as I loved it. And once he said that stuff, it was like a girlfriend who breaks up with you. You can’t fight with her. It’s like everything is so great, and then they say “I hate you!” out of nowhere. There’s really no argument you can have. I had my heart broken. That was the second time my heart was broken since that girl that Better Off Dead was about — honest to God.
(Steve Holland, Ibid.)
Truly a sight to behold. A man beaten. The once great champ, now, a study in moppishness. No longer the victory hungry stallion we’ve raced so many times before, but a pathetic, washed up, aged ex-champion.
That’s actually a line from one of the car race scenes, but it’s my favorite. Challenge: call someone “a study in moppishness” this week — to their face!
I really thought as time went by, [Cusack] might feel differently. But I read one other article that he got jailed for something. Somebody in his car had something, I don’t know what, but he got jailed for something. He said, “Jail sucked the most because everybody kept coming up to me going, ‘I want my two dollars!'”
(Steve Holland, Ibid.)
The buttrape, on the other hand, was “pretty okay”.
Look, Charles, I’ve got to do this. If I don’t, I’ll be nothing. I’ll end up like my neighbor, Ricky Smith. He sits around crocheting all day and snorting nasal spray.
He snorts nasal spray? You know where I can score some?!
So you won’t tell anyone?
What, that you’re a Dodgers fan?
I do love the wink, here. It always comforts me to know that there are other people on the earth who are as truly bad at winking as I am. Not a lot of other people, but a few.
Sure, you can park your Camaro on the lawn at Dodger Stadium. Happens all the time. Goddamn if that is not the most eighties-riffic thing I’ve seen all week. Ski rack, saxophone, mom jeans, and John Cusack: winner, winner, chicken dinner!
Hope you’ve found the inaugural edition of 12 Days of Highly Tolerable Holiday Movies enlightening. And now you’re armed with this very sad backstory of the dissolution of the friendship between the star and the director — because nothing says the holidays like, “You are dead to me.” So cue it up, grab your gelatinous raisin-riddled mass, and bask in Better Off Dead’s warm 80’s glow.
Les Liens Invisibles via defacedbook on the tumblr.
The study of hieroglyphic languages shows us that a word is an image … the written word is an image. However, there is an important difference between a hieroglyphic and a syllabic language. If I hold up a sign with the word “ROSE” written on it, and you read that sign, you will be forced to repeat the word “ROSE” to yourself.
If I show you a picture of a rose you do not have to repeat the word. You can register the image in silence. A syllabic language forces you to verbalize in auditory patterns. A hieroglyphic language does not. I think that anyone who is interested to find out the precise relationship between word and image should study a simplified hieroglyphic script. Such a study would tend to breakdown the automatic verbal reaction to a word. It is precisely these automatic reactions to words themselves that enable those who manipulate words to control thought on a mass scale.
(Burroughs, William S. Interivew: “Prisoners of the Earth Come Out.”)
Burroughs photographed by Allen Ginsberg, 1953. Coilck to enlarge.
I’m not certain about this. A lot of the time I think in words. At least, I think I do. I read such a great deal and speak to my family and friends and students so much, that I know I find myself wandering the house thinking in full sentences. I’m almost positive of this. I do not consider this style of thought, nor words being the necessary articulators and wives to my thoughts, as inferior to a purer thought absent of words. I understand the function of language and the theories of Mssrs. Lacan and Derrida, with which Mr. Burroughs’ theory would seem to agree and from which it sort of shoots off, but the thought control parts and the ability to divorce one’s own thoughts from words in to a language of pure image is shakier ground for me. I get it, I think. I’m just not sure I agree. Whether I disagree that it is possible, or disagree that it is important, I’m not sure.
Just three years ago, Sharon was a “painfully shy girl of 20 with blonde pigtails,” according to her own recollection. The Dallas-born youngster had never acted or had a smidgen of dramatic training.
Now that Sharon is an actress in the technical sense of the word, anyhow, she has set her goal on becoming “a light comedienne in the Carol Lombard style.”
“I’ll give up acting the second I’m married,” says Sharon, which leads many observers to believe it won’t happen for some time.
Most actresses would rather shed a husband than a career, but Sharon is an unusual girl. What actress, for example, would go out her way to point up the scars on her face? Sharon has a noticeable diagonal scar under her left eye. She also has a small one to the side of the left eye, and another one–“caused by chicken pox”–on her forehead.
“I suffered the big scar,” says Sharon, “when I fell on a piece of corrugated tin when I was five. I wouldn’t dream of having the scar removed. I am very proud of it. It’s me.”
(“Sharon Tate is on a crash program to get to the top.” New York Sunday News. December 18, 1966.)
So many thanks again to TheSensationalSharonTate blog for the transcript of the full and charming interview.
Valley of the Dolls (Mark Robson, 1963). Jennifer North (Sharon Tate) appears in a French art house film to get enough money to get her clingy, vampiric mother off her back and hopefully resolve other financial entanglements in her life. She becames a moderate success and something of a sex symbol in Europe, but continues to grapple with success in America. All the while, what the Jennifer North character wants more than anything is to have a child to whom she can show the affection and provide the loving stability she, herself, never received.
Travilla, Costume Designer: Sharon Tate is divine, a real find. Just wait and see what happens when the critics and public see her in Valley of the Dolls. Sharon has everything Marilyn Monroe had and more. She has the fascinating, yet wholly feminine strength of a Dietrich or a Garbo….a classically beautiful face, an exciting figure, the kind of sex appeal and personality appeal to become as glittering a star as Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, Elizabeth Taylor.
(“Valley of the Dolls.” Screen Stories. December 1967.)
Mark Robson: She’s not a sexpot. She’s a very vulnerable girl. The biggest surprise in the film is Sharon.
(Ibid.)
Robert Viharo: Everybody [on set] was competitive with everybody. The only one that I felt was above it, was Sharon Tate. The sweetest, purest, most open spirit.
(Viharo, Robert. AMC’s “Backstory: Valley of the Dolls.” Original airdate: April 23, 2001.)
Jennifer North’s dislike of her career being centered around her body and her desire for a husband and children mirrors Sharon Tate’s own ambitions in life, and discomfort with being viewed only as a sex symbol and not recognized for her free spirit and comedic timing. (Of course, a major difference is Sharon had a very close relationship with her family and a positive upbringing.) Ms. Tate threw herself in to this part and received very good reviews, best of the cast and much better than her far more famous co-star Patty Duke. However, given her unique style and love for others, she would probably dislike that I wrote that comparison out. So I’m sorry, Ms. Tate — I merely wanted to point out that Travilla’s prediction came true!
As an Army “brat” (her father is Maj. Paul James Tate), she spent a great deal of her childhood packing and moving from one military base to another.
Before Sharon was 15, she had lived in Tacoma, Houston, El Paso and San Francisco — just to name a few cities. When Maj. Tate was shipped overseas in 1959, he took his wife and Sharon with him. As a result, Sharon boasts a fluency in Italian and a diploma from a Vicenza, Italy, high school.
(“Sharon Tate is on a crash program to get to the top.” New York Daily News, December 18, 1966.)
I believe that childhood upheaval, while it does give you an interesting background, is part of why she reports having been so painfully shy. I moved around a lot as a kid and felt the same. In interviews, though, she cites her background as having made her a “people watcher,” and a person who is open to new experiences and travel. I appreciate that, true to form, she gleaned the positive from what could have been a negative experience, and I think the above picture beautifully exemplifies that attitude of attenuation to detail and desire to marvel at the world around you.
“You must remember I was shy and bashful when I reached Hollywood. My parents were very strict with me. I didn’t smoke or anything. I only had just enough money to get by and I hitchhiked a ride on a truck to the office of an agent whose name I had.”
“That very first day he sent me to the cigarette comercial job. A girl showed me how it should be done, you know taking a deep, deep breath and look ecstatic.”
“I tried to do as she said,” Miss Tate explained, “but the first breath filled my lungs with smoke and I landed on the floor. That ended my career in cigarette commercials.”
(“Sharon Tate Leaves You Breathless.” Robert Musel. Stars and Stripes Magazine. January 1, 1967.)
Special thanks to the SensationalSharonTate blog, you can read the full article here. I love how matter-of-factly self-effacing Sharon Tate comes off in interviews — a sense of humor about oneself is such a good quality.
Voice of the Internet: Hello, E. I am the Voice of the Internet and I am here to judge your journal.
Good Ol’ E: Fuck a bunch of Voice of the Internet. You’re not going to make me apologize for anything.
VOI: We’ll see. Let’s start: Your blog lacks a strong male figure.
GO’E: Your mom lacks a strong male figure.
Look out: Jessica Rabbit will hit you with a purse, next three miles.
VOI: Yes, and I have often wondered if this is part of what lead her to abandon me and be a drug-shooting hooker who is not one of the ones with a heart of gold at all. So thanks for reminding me, Miss Apology-Not McInsensitivepants.
GO’E: Shit. Okay, well, still I must say that is a totally forced insult name, even with allowances for being made up on the fly and under duress.
VOI: I have difficulty making up insult names, on the fly or otherwise, because I have short-term memory loss as a result of a head injury from being dropped as a baby.
GO’E: That explains a lot.
Ir♥sh boy Gabriel Byrne for the priest picture because why not?
VOI: Oh? It happened when my grandmother dropped me upon hearing the news of my underground-decommissioned-firetruck-racing father’s accidental decapitation when he was saying Mass because he was also a priest on top of racing. Though I was only a few weeks old, my grandmother was holding me since, as I have just mentioned, my mother is a drug-addicted hooker who abandoned me. Does that “explain a lot”?
GO’E: Okay, actually no, because what the mothership was a bedamned underground-decommissioned-firetruck-racing priest even doing with a drug-addicted hooker? And how do you race a firetruck?
VOI: He accompanied a negotiator to a police standoff with my mother in a motel room, a standoff which was over of course drugs and hooking, and my father succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome and I was conceived. I don’t know how you race a firetruck* because my father it seems was the only one and the knowledge died with him that awful day in Mass when he was decapitated by accident.
GO’E: If he was the only one, then was it like a beat-your-own-best-time thing or else who did he firetruck-race against?
VOI: We don’t know. They have never come forward despite the reward.
GO’E: I am getting straight up interested despite my own damned self. What reward?
Just pretend Gabriel Byrne is behind the wheel in the cab.
VOI: My grandmother has posted the offer of a reward to anyone with information about my father’s firetruck-racing, as we did not know about the secret racing life he led until after his death, when we discovered an embroidered “Four-time Underground-decommissioned-firetruck-race Winner” robe** in his effects. When she passes on, which will be soon because she has recently been diagnosed with cataracts —
GO’E: Not typically fatal.
VOI: — plus liver, stomach, and ovarian cancer —
GO’E: Shit. Sorry.
VOI: — then in accordance with her wishes, I will add to the reward fund with any leftover money after we settle up the estate. I anticipate that the reward will go as high as about $3500.
GO’E: Huh. I need to say: for being the Voice of the Internet, you are awfully fucking pretty specific.
VOI: You really say cusses a lot.
GO’E: What the what? After all this shit, you’re going to try to bring me down with some motherfucking ridiculous chump change criticism like that? “You really say cusses a lot.” Like, dude, how even old are you?
VOI: I am ten and I can’t say I am appreciating your king-size cusses.
GO’E: Oh, effing cheezits. This is going all kinds of not well. Heck. Know what? I’m sorry.
VOI: So the Voice of the Internet wins? Against you?
GO’E: Dude. The Voice of the Internet wins the whole dad-blessed thing against Good Ol’ E for alwaystimes, okay?
And……..scene.
*for the record you underground race decommissioned firetrucks the way you race regular cars ‘cept you do it a-way out in the country at this quarry behind my friend’s stepfather’s ranch and you better believe you run the sirens THE WHOLE TIME it is the fucking shit sorry kid but only a king-size cuss will do for how much of the fucking shit firetruck-racing is: all of the fucking shit okay so pass it on but try to keep it underground.
**He actually won five times but they don’t know it because he left that robe in a truck stop in Tulsa. Total bummer cause he loved that thing.
Or is it the third? Either way. Breaking news: Some guys are just plain ol’ rock stars and you cannot keep a good pimp down!
All photos are Christian Bale by Ellen Von Unwerth, Interview magazine, February 2001.
I had a wonderful time with the Cappy while he was here yesterday and today. I think it will be impossible for me to be in a bad mood for quite a while. Tomorrow I am lunching with Miss D, finally, and I think I should see the Fountainhead soon; he called today but I was busy with my best boy — of all things we were looking at vintage CandyLand boxes online to try to pick out our versions from childhood, because we played kidlet — and spanked her ass like bosses!– but were chagrined by the changes time has wrought in the character designs. The Cappy in particular was very disappointed in the revamp of Queen Frostina.
It’s funny: I always forget how ridiculously and simply wonderful it is to just hang out and jabber for hours with the Cappy on end. He really is a brother from another mother. The time truly flies.
Also, this morning while we were driving around a few memory lanes, I called bullshit on a red light after already having sat at it for at least a full minute; I just up and went. Halfway across the incredibly busy intersection I had this horrible adrenaline-charged panic that surged through me shrieking, “Shit! What the fuck am I doing?!” but fortunately I hit the accelerator and hightailed it the rest of the way out of there, to the accompaniment of multiple horns honking — but no one even had to brake, the timing was completely surreal. Thank god. All we can surmise is that, focused on our conversation and lulled by the fact I’d been driving around over an hour, I saw it was briefly clear and atavistically bolted. I do have a well documented lack of patience, so it’s possible!
Between catching up with Miss D tomorrow and trying to rid my computer of a frumious bandersnatch that’s been redirecting me from search results to adware (total folklore), I will probably only be spottily updating the journal. Until then! Salute — I’m off to bed!
You’re only given as much as you can handle at any given time. Whether it’s true or not, it gives you the strength.
The fears that live inside of us, whatever they are, and however they manifest, prevent us from living our highest potential, as individuals, and as contributors to the human race. If we consciously and vigilantly transmute those fears through compassion for others, and for ourselves, we will know what it is to live a peaceful existence on this planet.
I truly believe that we can overcome any hurdle that lies before us and create the life we want to live. I have seen it happen time and time again.
You may recognize Yael Naïm’s name, face, voice, or some combination of the three. Her single “New Soul” was featured in an Apple laptop commercial a few years back and for a little bit there she justly blew up. The track went to #7, making her the first Israeli solo artist to have a top ten hit on the USA charts.
Photo art for a poster promoting a January, 2007 concert at Studio d’hermitage in Paris.
Naim sang as a soloist with the [Israeli] air force troupe, starting in 1996. “Even though it was the army, it was pleasant,” she says. During her service, she was sent by the army to sing at a benefit concert in Paris. The organizers noticed her voice and took note of her name.
When she got out of the army, she was sent to another benefit concert in Paris. After performing a few songs at the piano she was approached by French producers who wanted to hear more. “I always had drafts of songs with me,” says Naim. “They just happened to be looking for someone for a musical project and when they heard what I do, they were all excited and offered me a contract.” Israeli recording companies had not been very enthusiastic about the music she made with her band, “The Anti Collision,” but four days after landing in Paris, at the age of 21, Yael Naim had a recording contract with EMI.
Paris was super, super kind to her; her 2007 self-titled album debuted at #11 on the French charts. Get it, girl!
Nobody expects an accordion.
When asked to explain her huge success among the French, she just asks: “Where are all these people coming from?
“It’s not the success that’s making me feel like my life is changing completely. Since I’ve had the opposite experience, when you’ve been told before that radio stations don’t want to play your music, that you should wait a few more months, I could really appreciate the speed and ease with which this record succeeded.
And from that moment, when I suddenly had this feeling of peace, this sense that evidently things are going to be fine, I’ve just felt surprised all the time and am always asking myself: ‘How can this be?'” (“Cinderella Song,” Tidhar Wald, Haaretz, November 2007)
I will be the one, you’ll see I’m the only one
Yeah I’m the only one, we belong together
I will be the one to see you’re the only one
Yeah you’re the only one, now until forever
You will see that we’re meant to be
Our love will grow peacefully
You should stay with me one more day
So how come you still walk away
If you are the only one
You are the only one
And I’m sure you feel the same
You became the one to blame, you’re the only one
Yeah you’re the only one who can make me so mad
I exclaim “where is the flame?”, you’re the only one
Yeah you’re the only one who can hurt me so bad
We will be happy as can be
Our love will grow tenderly
You will say you are here to stay
So how come you still walk away
If you are the only one
I am the only one
who can make you see that, yourself
You’re a star, let me take you far
I can really feel who you are
We will share everything that’s rare
So how come you still do not care
To know you’re the only one
Yeah you’re the only one
But it’s so unfair, I’m the only one
Yeah I’m the only one to see
It’s insane, now I remain, I’m the only one
You are the only one who can make me so sad
Can you see how fast I ran?
Yeah I’m the number one, two, three
You’re the only one who can play this game
I’m the only one, and I’m so glad you came
Give her official site, yaelweb.com, a spin to learn what Yael Naïm has been up to recently and order her 2001 and 2007 albums. This song is also a video with Readymade FC.
David Lynch, besides being a genius of the film world, is also a man of opinions and unminced words about mobile movies and cell phone technologies. It’s great because, with the music, it seems like a commercial for the technology. Yeah … it’s not.
He also has opinions and unminced words about product placement by ad sponsors as a source of revenue for studios in a film.
*Stalk is such a strong word. I just parked across the street from his place every few days for a while in the evenings and was “aware” of the neighborhood’s garbage night. Let’s not throw stones, here. I never had an agenda for meeting him; indeed, I hope never to, as I do not believe that I deserve to consciously share his airspace, nor should he have to make eye contact with such a low one as me.
Your magnificent Miss November 2001 was the lovely and talented and unremittently marvelous, in this shiksa’s opinion, Lindsey Vuolo. Ms Vuolo’s interview with Playboy touched on her recent trip to Israel, included a picture from her bat mitzvah, and set off a shitstorm of reactionary crossfire about pornography, sex, and religion in the conservative Jewish community, from which she valiantly refused to back down. Preach it, garrl!
Photographed by Arny Freytag – for some reason in this picture she looks like Raquel Welch, which is nothing to sneeze at, but she is a beauty in her own right and the resemblance is not present in the other pictures.
Lindsey’s Italian father converted to Judaism to marry her Russian mother. “I traveled to Israel as part of an exchange program and it was an amazing trip,” she says. “Being in Jerusalem was so emotional for me — I broke down and cried.” (“Lindsey,” Playboy, November 2001)
Holy shit, if that did not apparently ruffle feathers for her to be naked emotionally as well as physically by describing what being Jewish meant to her in terms of her personal identity and emotions. (You can bare your breasts, and you can bare your bajango*, but you can’t bare those with your soul and be religious!)
*thank you, Tina Fey, for the term “bajango.” I’ll get to the Playboy interview where she first dropped that term for ladyparts another day.
What happened next was, this guy Rabbi Shmuley Boteach caught wind of her appearance –especially her emphasis on her religion and what it meant to her identity– and publicly took Lindsey to task for posing for Playboy (though he had himself appeared in the magazine promoting his book, Kosher Sex).
Feminists and porn-purveyors alike took Lindsey’s side, and soon everyone from rabbis to radical social theorists was weighing in with their opinions on faith and sex. These are two topics that everyone has touch them in some personal way, so I’m not surprised that people felt personally authorized to comment on the issue. I remember noting in college classes that the discussions during lecture in which everyone was the most engaged usually involved universal human issues like religion, sex, or love. Everyone experiences these things, so everyone has an opinion!
Taking advantage of the publicity which resulted from the itty-bitty-titty holy war, Boteach enticed her to come to a recorded and Extremely Accusatory “discussion” with him of the issue of pornography and Judaism vis-a-vis what the religion’s teachings were and how pornography impacts marriage, traditional ideals of femininity, and sexuality. She had the balls to show up, and not only that, defend herself. Reading the interview, I felt ashamed. I could have never made it through to the end the way she does. I’m easily humiliated by disapproving men. Not so Ms. Vuolo. She has an admirable self-awareness and a respectful but strong spine of steel. Check some of these excerpts, which I’ve thoughtfully and even thought-provokingly interwoven with the quotes from the “interview”:
Shmuley Boteach: So tell me what you think about the following ideas, okay? Number one: Pornography or Playboy ultimately, far from being sexy and titillating, is actually boring and monotonous because the moment you see someone’s body in its entirety, the first few minutes, sure, it’s very exciting but after that nothing is left to the imagination. It loses its erotic allure. I mean, all studies show that when women go to bed with guys too early, it almost always destroys the relationship because the thrill of the chase is gone, the mystery is gone. The human body requires mystique in order to retain its attractiveness. There also has to be the involvement of the mind in order for there to be fantasy, and nudity and sexual over-explicitness actually hinders fantasy.
For example, as a marriage counselor, I always say to wives, don’t ever walk around the bedroom naked unless it’s time for sex and he has to earn the right to see your body naked because–
Lindsey Vuolo: I disagree with that.
SB: You disagree with that?
LV: Yeah. Because you know, my husband–well, I don’t have a husband but if I had a husband, and we share everything together and I’m his, I’ll run around naked for him. That’s for him, I mean, then he doesn’t need to see anyone else naked.
SB: I wish what you were saying was true but according to the Hite report the fact that 75% of husbands are unfaithful and the fact that half of marriages end in divorce shows that unfortunately men need variety when they feel they get bored. Many men who cheat on their wives claim to love their wives. They do it only because they need something new. So clearly, it is very possible to get bored of your wife’s body, no matter how much she runs around for you.
LV: Well, I think for all time men will always look at women whether it’s their wives or someone else. And I don’t think that they get bored, you know, they look–
RS: No, no, we know they look at women’s bodies. The question is, will they look at the same woman’s body. You’re Miss November. They’re not going to make you Miss December under any circumstances. The reason is the guys have seen you and they’ve just seen you. They want someone new now. Doesn’t that alone prove to you that pornography gets boring?
Playboy has used you and you’ll never be a playmate again.
LV: I posed for this for me. So if I’m degrading anyone, I’m just degrading myself. What other women do–
SB: But the biggest sins in life are where we hurt ourselves even more than other people.
LV: But I don’t feel like I’m hurting myself.
Holy fuckballs, what a passel of ice-cold punches to the gut. If you have sex or display yourself as sexual, you have used up your ace in the hole, blown your wad of feminine mystique, as it were, and will forever forth be undervalued. Um … is this so? I don’t even know! I just want to go shower and cry! Bitch magazine, help a Catholic girl with deep-seated Daddy Issues out:
Unwilling to cow to the rabbi, (who, it should be noted, promoted his own book in Playboy) Lindsey stood her ground, explaining that she had done nothing wrong. According to Lindsey, Playboy doesn’t even count as pornography because to her the word conjures up images of “penetration, urination, and things like that.” (“My Meidel is a Centerfold,” Bitch Magazine, Deborah Kolben, May 2002.)
Okay, well, at least I know other women will give me a hug and a “it’s okay, honey,” whether or not we are any of us sure about anything after the tirade about how men will grow tired of us and we must not be naked in front of even our husbands.
So. Quick word about this shoot: okay, obviously I have a majah girl-brain-crush on Lindsey Vuolo, but, strictly from an unbiased perspective, from the artistic standpoint, I strongly believe that this photoshoot stands head and shoulders above most of the others from the 2000’s.
It has a clear unity of vision: the story is, this super-super-cute, vintage-lingerie-loving, wholesome, upbeat gal works at an old-fashioned pie-and-coffee kind of diner as a pastry chef or baker of some kind, and it's after-hours.
If this does not melt your heart with its brain-asplodin’ cuteness, you are made of STONE and we have nothing to offer each other.
First she’s with you in the dinette, then she’s showing you around at home. It’s cut and dry and adorable as shit. Love it. Okay! Back to the hot button side of the story. Final thought, for clarification and prompting of to-be-determined further discussion:
Some have incorrectly claimed that Vuolo is the first Jewish Playmate. Vuolo herself has agreed it is more likely that she merely is the first openly Jewish Playmate. (the wiki)
This has been certainly a long enough entry already, all apologies, so perhaps we ought to save the important and striking issue of why a beautiful woman looking to be famous in America might consider her Judaism a liability rather than an asset and choose to downplay this important aspect of her heritage and womanhood (*cough, cough* Holly Madison) for another day.
But Don’t Think I’m Forgetting. I got a memory like Babar — but a figure like Bettie Page. Ow! Call me!
“In films, we are trained by the American way of moviemaking to think we must understand and ‘get’ everything right away. But this is not possible. When you eat a potato, you don’t understand each atom of the potato!” (Interview with David Sherritt, The Christian Science Monitor, 8/3/94)
Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self. (Critique called “What Is Cinema?” for Les Amis du Cinéma , 10/1/52, a work which advanced the auteur theory but also kind of ripped off Bazin, which is weird cause Bazin would’ve read it and was a big influence on Godard but this was done contemporaneously of Bazin himself working on something titled this, about this, so maybe the quote is misattributed? … or maybe there is more to it than I know with my tiny ken of French movie guys, maybe it was a done thing to borrow titles from one another, or perhaps it was a continuation of a dialogue they were already having both in person and via publications, or, finally, it could even have been an “understood” question which anyone might use as the title of a book or article … I am probably over-reading it.)
Hands down my favorite picture of Anna Karina
Beauty is composed of an eternal, invariable element whose quantity is extremely difficult to determine, and a relative element which might be, either by turns or all at once, period, fashion, moral, passion. (“Defense and Illustration of Classical Construction,” Cahiers du Cinéma, 9/15/52)
Cover or liner art for her album, a collaboration with the dread Serge G
The truth is that there is no terror untempered by some great moral idea. (“Strangers on a Train,” Cahiers du Cinéma 3/10/52 — Godard wrote extensively and insightfully in his early career about the movies of Hitchcock, one of my favorite and I think misunderstood directors; I’ll try to share some good nuggets from time to time)
Anna cahorts about topless as Anne in 1968’s The Magus, also starring Anthony Quinn (Zorba the Greek), Michael Caine, and Candace Bergen (Murphy Brown) — no one seems to like this movie but me. That’s okay, because I like it a lot.
Playboy’s Miss November 1976, the lovely and talented Patti McGuire, was also Playmate of the Year in 1977, and is famous in the Playboy world for two things; first, for being being to Hef’s right/the viewer’s left on the Playboy Pinball Machine backglass, and second, for being the cover model and centerfold in the issue where Jimmy Carter was interviewed.
It is the only issue in the history of the magazine to feature an interview with a presidential candidate — and of course, after only being on the stands about a week, he won the election. So now it is the only issue with a president interviewed in its pages. In the course of his profile and interview with Robert Scheer, Carter admitted,
“I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.”
a remark that has haunted his political career as jeers from the shadows which kind of besmirch all the awesome charity work he and his wife do with Habitat for Humanity. Yes, because he is the only person ever to have windowshopped. I think it is admirable he was open and humble about it. Excuse a dude for being honest.
Patti McGuire had some opinions about fidelity and affairs as well, but they were not quite in the same spirit of confession, self-improvement, and the difficulty of faithful loving as President Carter’s:
In discussing relationships, she admitted that she believed in a “reverse double” standard. She wanted to be free to explore casual affairs, but her man had to be faithful. Could she be more specific?
“Well, have you ever seen the original uncut version of King Kong? When Kong first meets Fay Wray, he peels off her clothes, fondles her and then sniffs his fingers. Later, when he’s climbing the Empire State Building, he reaches through a window and grabs a blonde. He sniffs her and, realizing that she is not his beloved, casually tosses her some 50 stories to her death. That’s my idea of a faithful lover.” (“Missouri Breaker,” Playboy, November 1976)
Patti married tennis star Jimmy Connors in 1978 and they are still together, so apparently he either cured her double standard or overlooks it. They have two children, according to the wiki. No word on if he ever threw anyone off a building for her, but obviously he is doing something right if they’ve been married thirty-one years.
Patti at the 2009 Chicago Glamourcon with the Bally’s Pinball Machine backglass
These days, Patti travels and does public appearances with other playmates, and devotes her time to her husband and children. In the above picture, she is at the Chicago Glamourcon in 2009, posing with the famous Pinball Machine. She was recently featured on a site called goodplasticsurgery.com, who pointed out that her face still looks like her own, despite that, given her age, she has probably had light work done. I agree. She’s looking well. I think it’s because she’s lived a good, happy life. What more can any of us ask for!
I’ll be honest: Miss November 1995, Holly Witt, mainly bores the crap out of me, and I feel like Playboy did not put their best effort forward with this pictorial’s disjointed themes, nor did they demand enough of the model.
Photography by Arny Freytag and Stephen Wayda
I just feel like this shoot could have been done better. I’m surprised Arny Freytag was involved. Possibly he only did the centerfold and this Wayda character did the rest.
The kiddie pool picture is actually pretty good. And the one below of her in the salon chair with her hand to her head is okay. But the rest come off wooden to me and look like something from a much cheaper magazine. It’s a shame that they let her get away with just doing the kind of arched back, pouty mouth thing, because I think she was capable of more. Some more stringently unusal or less stiff poses could have made the shoot kind of this interesting and erotic, challenging look at the trope of the slutty housewife: the set dressing and pastel but somehow lurid, vivid colors would have worked great with that.
Instead, because she was allowed to go with Porn 101 posing of chipmunk face and out-thrust breasts (not that there is anything wrong with that pose in its appropriate context), the shoot just falls in to pornographic fantasy pictures instead of doing the more dynamic and interesting thing by elevating it a level further and erotically, cleverly referring to that genre, rather than crassly being it. Does this make sense?
Anyway, fuck this shoot. The rest of the text is going to be quotes from an interview that also ran in this issue by contributing editor Lawrence Gobel with none other than superbomb flyass mothafucka Mr. Harvey Keitel.
PLAYBOY: You must be aware of how people react to you. You’ve developed a reputation as a powerful actor willing to dare exposure.
KEITEL: I’m smiling now as you say dare. I mean, that’s what I do. I don’t know what to say, except that it comes naturally to me. You want to call it daring? OK. I look at it as being.
KEITEL: Here’s a man who is doing the job of a pimp and a girl who is working as a prostitute. It’s monstrous, it’s horrible. But that wasn’t my approach to it. My approach was as a working man. Often, pimps are brilliant people caught up in life’s misfortunes. It’s like this whole debate going on about the welfare system: Is it the fault of the poor or of their circumstances? I believe a great deal of it has to do with their circumstances, not just because they are irresponsible.
PLAYBOY: How could Reservoir Dogs have gone further?
KEITEL: Perhaps there was some way to make the universal quest more obvious to an audience.
PLAYBOY: You may have a point—most people saw it as a violent movie, not one of some Arthurian quest.
KEITEL: I never saw it as a violent film. … I see it more as a story about a man who is in need of nourishing a younger man, of being a father figure, of being an example. It’s a quest we’re all on.
You can read the full interview here, which I strongly recommend because Keitel mercilessly fucks with Gobel the entire time; he is enigmatic and a dick and just all-around brooking no publicity machine bullshit. He is the consummate Man. I love him so well.
In closing and to bring it back to the subject of this entry, I will merely add that if you are on a date with the lovely and talented Ms. Witt and are thinking of impressing her with a story about Pythagoras or Fermat, shut your piehole, because she lists among her turn-offs “math and history.” Awesome.
Mr. Duvall: So, uh… how was your summer?
Ms. Norbury: I got divorced.
Mr. Duvall: Oh. My carpal tunnel came back.
Ms. Norbury: I win.
— Mean Girls, 2004.
Ms. Norbury: [after implying that an elderly biker is her boyfriend] I’m kidding. Sometimes older people make jokes too.
Damian: My nana takes her wig off when she’s drunk.
Ms. Norbury: Your nana and I have that in common.
“I ate weaker girls for breakfast. I really was a snarky girl. My whole thing was, if I really liked a guy and he had the audacity to like someone else instead of me, I would hate that girl and devote hours and hours of time to picking her apart and talking about her behind her back and canvassing my friends to dislike her. Just a waste of time, ridiculous, but when you’re going through it at that age, you’re making yourself sick with bile and hurting other people and their feelings.” — Tina Fey, Washington Post article “Tina Fey, Specs Appeal,” by William Booth (April 25, 2004).
Suddenly I’ve got a lot of little details to attend to today. And I’m elated to say that later in the day I’m going to rendezvous with the Gentleman for some Zombieland, soosh-bombasticos at the ol’ Gardino, and hopefully some very-much-needed heavy, deep, and real chitty chat, not to mention crispy Japanese beers big as my head. All this in mind, I’m handing over the reins for the day to the auto-posting feature.
Ladies and gentleman, the lovely and talented Tina Fey!
“I used to dress up in my best nightgown, which was a peach-colored rayon number with a matching robe, and I would drink soda out of a champagne glass in the dark while I watched The Love Boat. I pretended I was on the cruise. That was so classy.”
Playboy: Isn’t there an old show-business rule about not acting with children or animals?
Tina Fey: That’s right. They will upstage you because they’re adorable. The same can be said of Amy Poehler. I shouldn’t have acted with Poehler. She climbs everything and curls up in your lap, and she’s cuter than babies. Playboy: That’s a pretty bold statement.
Tina Fey: Amy Poehler is cuter than a baby and a monkey combined.
I did not much care for the movie Baby Mama; maybe my expectations of it were too high. Trouble is, my husband and I watched it on television a few days before we separated (come to think of it, it may have been only hours), so I can’t say anything for sure about my opinions of what I viewed during that time period. Except that Forgetting Sarah Marshall is NOT a good movie to watch when you’re waiting for the right moment to ask for a split — I am pretty sure that is a unilateral truth that we were merely unlucky enough to stumble upon the actual experience of but that everyone can agree is nonetheless for-sure-solid in terms of epiphanies, without having to personally go through it.
In the past few weeks, I’ve started talking to some of my friends — specifically Miss D and Jonohs because they are tricksie and ask the tough questions in mild and genuinely curious and empathetic enough ways that I don’t get startled and run screaming down to Mexico to avoid admitting that I actually feel Ways about Things — more about the separation, more about our time together, and even have talked more to my husband, and I’d pushed aside all those things for so long that I guess I must have started to fool myself that everything was okay.
It is not.
The horrible is beginning to set in as an all new breed of horrible, and congruently the panic is a different and infinitely deeper kind of panic. And I am afraid, and sometimes lonely, though it is self-induced isolation because it’s more like a desperate last-ditch effort at avoidance than loneliness. I can’t talk to my family about it because they are involved, and also frankly very pushy and aggressive people, and I tend to approach a problem far more tentatively than they do. To them, you just snap your fingers and you should know what you think and what to do next. I’m not that way, I need time before I am able to come to any conclusions about things. My feelings freak me out and I spook easily. I need a peaceful solo drive in the country or else a boisterous day of booze and ball to work through my emotions. Thank god a) it’s Autumn and my car is running. b) that the World Series is coming up. c) for my friends and their literally ’round the clock support of me.
I first wrote this looking back over my weekend and thinking of the time I spent with Paolo, Miss D, Geo, Corinnette, and Jonohs, and right then I was checking facebook for the first time in a day and was reminded that Panda Eraser put up a Batman on my wall for me, and Milo and Cinder keep inviting me over, and then I got a message from the Gentleman saying that if we change our minds and want soup, let him know, because kidlet and I are having a Sick Day. I am so ridiculously lucky to have such wonderful friends. If I’ve been avoiding anyone reading this or you haven’t heard from me in a bit, it’s probably because I was afraid if I talked to you I’d start crying and babbling about feelings, but if you don’t like getting avoided, then remind me I can suck it and better stop it! Make me talk, people, I’m a frigging powder keg over here.
“People think I’m a cliché. The dark lady, the bitch from Hell. All they can see is that I’m naked.” — Asia Argento
Like so many of my favorite quotes from Ms. A, I find a solid corner on the veracity of this complaint …. problematic. (I hate what I am about to say, but…if you are troubled by the fact that all people can see is your nudity, perhaps a quick robe might help?) But where it helps me is, it forces me to analyze whether I, too, set myself up for whatever stereotypification, dislike, or victimization I receive: is it easier to seek the familiar even if what is familiar is ostracism? I still haven’t told my “why-I-must-throttle-back-on-woman-judging” story, it’s really good and speaks beautifully to this point. At this stage, with thinking of it so much yet still not setting thoughts down, I must be avoiding it on purpose. Sorry. I’ll get there.
“I always saw myself as really ugly. My father even told me I was ugly because I would shave my head and look like a boy. It was strange for me to have to research femininity, but I found out these tricks for getting attention that I didn’t know before. It was a kind of revenge, I guess, on all the kids who said I was ugly at school.” –Asia Argento
Bar none best and most unflinchingly honest moment from her thinly veiled autobiography and directorial debut, Scarlet Diva: shaving her pits in the bathroom while puffing a dangler. I love this woman, crazy talk and flawed logic and all, maybe even more because of it, in fact.
Ladies and gentlemen, the handsome and talented Mr. Paul Rudd!
“It’s insane but it’s a great insane.” –Paul Rudd
“I was more interested in acting than just doing stand-up comedy. And then my interests in stand-up started getting really weird. I was into a very anti-comedian thing, a very, kind of, Andy Kaufman performance-art type thing, and I thought, “Well, if I were ever to do comedy, it would so not work, because it wouldn’t be funny.” [Laughs.] I think there are guys like Zack Galifianakis, I just think he’s like the best out there, so good. There are so many really good comedians, and I would never be as good as they are. It’s not my calling. What’s funny is, all the comics want to be musicians. Like Tom Waits or Elvis Costello. Same with actors. A lot of people say, “What’s the worst part about being an actor?” And the worst part is that you’re not a musician.” –Paul Rudd
“There’s a very specific thing you can do to get in magazines. I’m much happier to just show up and do the job. I haven’t taken the active approach to making myself a star. I haven’t been in a blockbuster.” –Paul Rudd
The Thought Experiment 