Davy Jones and Jul-Newms, The Monkees Get More Dirt Out.
This post originally appeared on April 5, 2010 at 2:59 pm.
Had a lot of dogs in the fire lately, Stanimal, but wanted to share these gorgeous caps of Jul-Newms in her guest appearance on The Monkees.
About a month ago, I thought I’d lost my specs and was going to have to get new ones and I was super-bummed, because I’ve gotten loads of compliments on my dorky, deliberately dowdy and thick black frames. I found them, but the brief transition back to my old, unobtrusive, lightweight and thin frames, and the corresponding dip in compliments and double-takes, hammered home to me how fun and harmlessly fetishistic a nice pair can be. Of glasses. Get your mind on track.
There’s a pervasive and misguided old saw that men aren’t attracted to a girl in glasses (I believe it runs, “Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses,” and I’ve seen it attributed to patroness Dorothy Parker, but I am not so sure it was she), which I feel is unfortunately still believed to this day.
I have not found this to be true, and I think these stills dispell that ugly myth once and for all. As the countersaying goes, “Men do make passes at girls who wear glasses — it all depends on their frame.”
So leave ’em on, ladies!
All stills from “The Monkees Get More Dirt Out,” Season 2, Episode 29, The Monkees. (Original air date April 3, 1967.) Ms. Newmar plays April Conquest, who works at the local laundromat, and with whom each of the Monkees falls in love.
In polls, questions at conventions, and weight of fan mail, the episode has been voted the most popular and favorite of the series. Get it, girl!
Edit 3/1/2012: In memoriam, extra stills of Davy and the gents.
Wednesday: You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now, my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations. Your people will wear cardigans and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the road sides; you will play golf, and enjoy hot hors d’oeuvres. My people will have pain and degradation. Your people will have stick shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They have said, “Do not trust the Pilgrims … especially Sarah Miller.”
Amanda: Gary, she’s changing the words!
Wednesday: … And for all these reasons, I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground.
edit 11/24/11: Several months ago I screencapped the hell out of a gorgeous, HD version of AFV with subtitles. Then my desktop hard drive crashed. I’ve been limping along on the strength of my laptop as I attempt to reconstruct the desktop with the help of others, but I hadn’t realized the breadth of my little tragedy until I went to put together my hotly anticipated Wednesday Thanksgiving post and brokenheartely remembered that batch of files hadn’t been transferred on to my external hard drive (which I frequently updated as a backup to both systems in the face of just such an eventuality as this). Sad. I’m sad about this.
Prohibit sharply the rehearsed response
And gradually correct the coward’s stance. …
Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at
New styles of architecture, a change of heart.
(W.H. Auden, “Petition.”)
Like that bird, for instance — do you think he woke up knowing he’d get to perch on a pert ass today? I expect not: I expect he thought it would be just another day, the same as all the others he has lived.
I guess what I’m suggesting is that, as Auden petitions, it is worthwhile to defy the lessons of experience, throw caution to the wind, and look with a hopeful heart for the unexpected and unpredictable new. How to completely go about doing that I am less certain of, but I know that it must be worth trying.
This post originally appeared on July 19, 2010 at 5:05 pm. Congratulations on another trip around the sun to you, my good true friend, and I hope you have many more to come.
Happy birthday to the one and only Jonohs Danger Welchos!
This encouragement is doubtless unnecessary because I doubt that you ever would. I’m sure you would talk the bastardes around to your point of view and you’d all have Fin du Monde and play Beatles Rock Band and they would vow never to carborundum again. I’m finishing Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter shortly and I’ll be starting next on my yearly Atwood. How nice to know this year when I re-read it that you will have just done so recently too. Last year I knew you, and was re-reading Handmaid’s Tale as always, and you had not read it yet. This time it will be different and I’ll know that I’m reading words that yet another of my friends has also enjoyed. See the interstitial power of the shared unconscious experience of reading? That’s impressive shit. If that is not impressive enough, I will buy you some sushi the next time we are both in town. But really, dude — the gift of reading. Come on. Be excellent.
But just in case you ever do feel down, remember that you are an awesome friendoh and I’m so glad to have gotten to be friends, and that I know great things are going to happen for you like in a perpetual motion engine powered by amazing karma for all your kindnesses and good humor to others.
And, of course, be prepared for whatever befalls you on this, the day of your birth —
A very recent addition to the pantheon of inside jokes via uglyxdutchling on the tumblr.
Hope you’re off work and having a great birthday, Mr. Welchos! But do try and hold it together.
This entry originally appeared in slightly different form on October 28, 2009 at 1:45pm.
Photographed by Sally Munger Mann.
Me, she had dispensed from joining the group; saying, “She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a distance; but that until she heard from Bessie, and could discover by her own observation, that I was endeavouring in good earnest to acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner — something lighter, franker, more natural, as it were —– she really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children.”
“Jane, I don’t like cavillers or questioners; besides, there is something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that manner. Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent.”
(Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre. Cornhill: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1847. pp. 3-4.)
Worst. Christmas. Ever.
Do you remember the positive indignation of adult severity in the face of your early self-expression? I think the knife really twisted because you knew they were just flying by the seat of their pants, arbitrary jerks running scared, threatened by your stabs at mastery. They had no more particular power or experience than another kid facing you down in a play war.
Another by Ms. Mann.
Don’t forget that. Every person who attempts to wave some type of banner of authority in your face is probably prickly-sweaty under the arms and hopped up on 90% couch fort bravado. Poke their pile of cushions with a stick and see if it tumbles down.
It’s been forever since we had a Hot Man Bein’ Hot of the Day. Shame on me! Some lady fan service. Depending on your viewpoint.
Stand By Me (Rob Reiner, 1986; adapted from the Stephen King novella “The Body”). This is the first of what I hope will be a series of Corey Feldman entries. He’s totally an O.G. hottie. Did You Know?
Okay, so before you castigate me as a freak and a pedophile, let me explain.
Understand that I’m coming at the “hot” aspect with the eyes of the little ’80’s girl who saw him in this and Gremlins, Goonies, Lost Boys*, et al and conceived a giant, throbbing, lifelong crush on Corey Feldman. My feelings when I see him with wet hair and his dorky glasses are timeless because of this. I am not generally turned on by pictures of 15-year-old boys.
Yes, he was 15. He was just playing a 12-year-old. Moderately better, yes? So please all around don’t look too askance at this entry. Appreciate with me that Terry Duchamp is all kinds of pimp in this movie! A total Unlikely G. That’s hot at any age, in the general-heat way, not the get-it-on heat way.
Totally pimp!, but I’m still feeling hinky. Gonna end this one early. Look for more Corey Feldman, hopefully with greater legality of age, in the near future.
*Don’t even act like I’m not in The Lost Boys because I totally am. I’m on the carousel in the boardwalk footage. Never Forget.
This post originally appeared on January 5, 2010 at 8:05 pm.
Roddy McDowall and Francine York, Batman, “The Bookworm Turns,” Season 1, Episode 29. Original airdate April 20, 1966. Well, that’s inauspicious. Shit.
I hate to come off as a down-at-the-mouth grump on the topic of love. I am a romantic. Here is the Bookworm and his lady, the lovely librarian Miss Lydia Limpet, and may I add that I rooted like gangbusters for this pair to win?
via Batman villains database — I love clunky contraptions on men’s heads. I find it so fucking cute. I really do.
In fact, I remember pretty strongly wanting him for myself (girls like a boy who reads!), but I rightly understood Miss Limpet having him was almost the same thing. Later, when I figured out he was in Planet of the Apes, I was even more impressed, but, being a fickle little girl, I soon made way for other crushes, like Matthew Broderick and the Great Mouse Detective — shut up, because that could work — to the point that, when I stayed at La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Arizona several years back and was given the “Roddy McDowall room,” I merely remarked that I’d “once thought he was cute,” and meant nothing more by it.
Interestingly, after his role as the Bookworm in the live-action television series, McDowall continued to wreak villainy in the DC world. He voiced Jarvis Tetch/the Mad Hatter for both Batman: The Animated Series and The New Batman Adventures, as well as performing him in a brief cameo for the late ’90s animated Superman.
In the original television series, the Mad Hatter was played by David Wayne. More on the Mad Hatter another day cause he was really depressed as a character and had some killer-great deadpan lines, even though no one matches King Tut in my estimation for the male villains’ comedic value. But back to love, because that is what I’m trying to prove is probably more important than trivial details of cartoons and old lunchbox-selling serials.
No, I can’t stop talking about it. Okay, because I’m looking at his page on the imdb to make sure I had the dates and titles right and it ends up Roddy McDowall was also the Breadmaster on Edlund’s masterwork The Tick, which is of grave emotional significance to me, and, moreover, had cameos on Darkwing Duck, Quantum Leap, and mother-effing Gargoyles. Also, he was monumentally in to photography and experimental camerawork. So, holy hell, I was smart to have a crush on him as a kid and now I’m going to have to get back to Roddy McDowall another day; he’s obviously been far more of an important thread in my life than I ever could have possibly understood … y’all please excuse me because Roddy McDowall has just now blown my mind.
Finally, according to authorities on these matters, the Catwoman outfit regularly worn by Julie Newmar appears to have been “upcycled” and worn by Francine York (who played librarian Miss Limpet on Batman) for the Lost In Space episode “The Colonists.” Also, in looking for pictures of her, I stumbled across a page where a woman had collected a bunch of pictures of famous Virgo women and though I always claim to put almost zero stock in that stuff, I have to say that they/we all have the faces of birdlike closet freaks who are too shy to smile with our lips parted but rock straight-up crazy do-me eyes despite our distrust of other people — to say nothing of the number of patron saints in her gallery of too-close-to-home horror. Good thing I think that’s largely bunk, or the unnerving similarities might have me concerned that my chakras weren’t aligned with the downward dog position of my chi and I’d have to bury a peeled potato under a full moon or some shit.
Truly the end of this post. Moving on for my own sake.
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.
Major happy birthday wishes to superfly dope-fresh Unlikely G, Mr. Bob Barker. Never been a huge game show guy but I love the dude.
American readers might know that Bob Barker, the longest-running host of a game show ever (The Price is Right — one of my sorority sisters cleaned house on that show), ended every episode of his show with the sign-off line, “Help control the pet population. Have your pets spayed or neutered,” a tradition his replacement after retirement, comedian Drew Carey, has continued. Thus I have a long association of spaying and neutering with Bob Barker. It’s an honor most would call dubious but I have a feeling that he would probably be quite happy with it. And today he turns 87!
Top five things you might not know about this gentle silver G:
Grew up on a reservation in South Dakota.
At 73, became the oldest MTV Movie Award recipient, winning Best Fight for his golf-course brawl with Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore.
Bowed out of longtime hosting duties for the Miss USA and Miss Universe Pageants when his request that the organization stop giving fur gifts was denied.
Gave $5 million to the Sea Shepherd Conservation for the outfitting and secret launch of a ship (since renamed the MV Bob Barker) which interdicted the Japanese whaling fleet.
Has two notorious beefs: a) with the Qualla Boundary Cherokee over their treatment of bears in their zoo, the long public fights over which have resulted in Chief Michell Hicks threatening to ban the rabble rouser and PETA from the res; and b) with formerly close pal Betty White over the relocation of an elephant from Los Angeles to a sanctuary in San Andreas.
It seems argumentative and counterintuitive to fight, but if I have learned nothing else from the rap world, it is that BAMF’s gotta have beefs, and you must admire someone tenacious enough to keep up an argument with a fellow bad-ass like Ms. White. They are both good people who are genuine friends to animals, and I predict they will patch it up, if they have not already.
So send a big birthday wish in to the universe for Bob Barker, an old school Unlikely G from way back!
Error: Student is too cool for school. (Beep, beep, beep — smoke starts coming out of the Unlikely G detector, holy cats, have we got a live one!) Give him all your G.I. Joes and that milk money you’ve been telling your mom you were spending on 2% but really you’ve been squirreling it away for the arcade. Yes, he knows.
Oh, my gosh, guys! I don’t know how it happened, but Patrick Stewart’s birthday slid right past me this week with no acknowledgement.
“Time’s Arrow.” Superfly.
All apologies, dude. Here is an unlikely G posting to mend the riff.
It’s only when you’re going through screencaps that you realize, holy shit, Patrick Stewart looks g as fuck at all possible times. He is a serious G master and we can only learn from his flyness.
“The Game.” That’s the one with Ashley Judd in it.
Except possibly in that picture I just put up. It’s the only really, really horrible one. But he was merely expressing what the script called for, which was hokey mind control by a game. So you can see that really Patrick Stewart was still fulfilling his financial obligation as a performer on the show, which all good G’s know they got to use their skillz to pay the billz. Still G, see?
“True Q” — a post is coming soon that is related to this episode.
And yes, I was alerted to the oversight by @LeVar Burton‘s twitter feed. I also follow @TheRealNimoy and @WilliamShatner. Do I get the Biggest Dork award yet? I promise never to take it out of the package and decrease its value. (“I bent my wookiee.”)
My sister-in-law and I used to have a running telephone gag where because of its glorious syndicated ubiquity — you could watch blocked hours at a time of it during the afternoon if you switched channels at the right half-hour — we would talk as though Scrubs were a new show of which we’d scarcely just now heard. It would go about like this:
“Helloooo! What are you doing?”
“Helloooo! I’m watching this situation comedy set in a hospital.”
“Really? What is it called?”
“Hmm. Docs or Duds or something.”
“Is it Scrubs, maybe?”
“Yes! Scrubs.”
“I’ve heard of that! That seems interesting.”
“It is! It’s even funny. Two of the doctors I think like each other.”
“Do you think they will ever get together, and then break up, and then do it over and over and over?”
“I have no idea — it’s a total mystery!”
“Gosh! I think I would like that. When can I catch it?”
“I’m not sure. It doesn’t seem like it’s on very often.”
Miss you, Christer. Muah. ♥
The Scrubs screencaps in this post come from fyeahscrubs! on the tumblr. When all the “Fuck yeah” tumblrs started, I was skeptical, but I find them increasingly great and this particular one has such awesome caps that I can go on there when I’m down and come out practically crying from laughing so hard. “You seem unhappy. I like that.” Thanks!
The Eyes of Laura Mars is a brilliant and appropriately grody American entry in to the wonderful giallo genre, with all the campy-but-seductive hallmarks and tricks of that trade — ice picks to the eye, topless models in front of burning cars, erotic obsession and guns — you might expect. I feel that the cinematography helps it to transcend any of the sillier stumbling blocks it faces with script and story.
This is actually the cover of Laura’s book, not the movie poster
The John Carpenter-penned flick (he has sole story credit and shares co-writing duties with David Zelag Goodman and some half-dozen others) stars Faye Dunaway as the titular character. Barbra Streisand turned the part down, although she does perform the main song on the soundtrack, “Prisoner (Love Theme from The Eyes of Laura Mars),” which had modest chart success with its release in ’78.
The photographs seen on Laura’s walls, in her book, and in her gallery showing are all actually done by world-reknowned photographer Helmut Newton. Kick ass!
Laura Mars is a risque photographer of violent erotica who begins to have visions of brutal murders. Tommy Lee Jones has an early and steamy turn as brash young turk Detective John Neville, an art aficionado and lead investigator on the case of the serial killer whose crimes Laura is seeing. At first, Laura only sees the victims when she looks through her camera lens, but soon, she is having the visions all kinds of inconvenient places, including behind the wheel of her car.
This scene is modestly famous and has been imitated in fashion shoots and on America’s Next Top Model.
We see Laura first struck by a vision when she is photographing for an advertising client in the first part of the movie, doing a shoot with burning cars and lingerie-clad models Lulu and Michele, who later wind up murdered in various states of undress, fighting each other. Here are some more of her models, with whom she is depicted as having a very friendly but I think rather condescending relationship, topless because why not? I’ll tell you why not:
Nude girls who die. It’s giallo and all, but it wanted to be taken more seriously, so I’m going to give it a serious talkin’-to real quick.
I realize models get demeaned a lot but when you’ve got a film which treats the topics of violence, sex, and imagery as interrelated in a logical thread, then you run the risk of implying the girls deserve it when you have them parade about naked and additionally get patronized by the better-than-them, wryly maternal heroine, the “smart girl” with the camera who is superior and holds some kind of moral ace so may not be as likely to die, does that make sense? Just sayin’.
“Let’s look hella g in 3,2,1 — GO.” “Were we going on 1, or on GO?” “Forget it, Laura, I’m already hella g’er than you.”
Also featured are baby Rene Auberjonois and baby Raul Julia as Laura’s best friend and ex-husband, respectively; always great to see either of them in a cast. Rounding out the suspect/victim list is this handsome fellow, Brad Dourif, who plays Laura’s chauffeur Tommy. Tommy has a checkered criminal past, but, as you can see, he has cleverly thrown everyone off the trail by styling himself like Charlie Manson.
Brad Dourif as driver Tommy Ludlow, another red-herring suspect who ends up in the victim body-pile. They’re dropping like flies, Laura! Flies with mutilated eyes, that you could have saved.
Neville seems to suspect her initially but, already an admirer of her photography and with an inarguable chemistry between them — hard-working detectives go to gallery shows on their off-nights, happens all the time — they grow to trust one another and he becomes her lover. Raise your hand if you agree with this decision. SPOILERS FROM HERE ON: IF YOU SOMEHOW HAVE NOT ALREADY GUESSED THE INEVITABLE AND DO NOT WISH TO KNOW THE ENDING OF THIS FABULOUSLY RIDICULOUS BUT SOMEHOW TOUCHING AND MEMORABLE FILM, READ NO FURTHER!!
Look at him absolutely pimping: open shirt, check. Sideburns, check. Gun and sexy lady? check and double-check! Too great.
Has she never seen a giallo film??? Laura! He is clearly hella the killer. You always sleep with the killer, innocently making him breakfast and smiling to yourself as you watch him walk down the steps, calling him to cry later when you find your friends dead. You’re falling in love with him as he mercilessly murders everyone else in your life who matters to you, coming closer and closer to the real objective of killing you, circling in a lazy loop like a hawk who is picking off mice in your orbit in whom he has less interest, merely maiming them and dropping them in your path, just to see you scamper faster!
Laura gets in a car wreck because her eyes are busy envisioning her best friend being murdered, and naturally runs straight to Neville for some scotch and sexytimes. Dig the tartan blanket on her and the red scarf on him!
Whoa, that analogy got completely out of control. All apologies. Giallo movies are just so fun to yell at. Anyway, I loved the story that the following series of screencaps told so much that I took a cap of it myself to demonstrate the strength of the cinematography in this film, the discourse between camera and viewer which itself points up the voyeuristic relationship between the observer and the observed and sex and death in the movie.
In this scene, Det. Neville has just finished a rambling, disjointed story to Laura about how Tommy the now-dead driver’s mother was a prostitute, and how Tommy’s father came home one day, and “outraged by the condition of the child,” he slashed her throat, but as he tells the story and Laura has shades of doubt (she knows Tommy and knows he didn’t grow up the way it’s being described), Neville slowly and chillingly begins to transpose the pronoun “I” for “he.” He winds down the story with the totally creepy line,
“I sat and watched the blood dry on her face, until it was just about … well, the color of your hair.”
The series of caps themselves tell a story; reminds me of the work of Martin Arnold (Life Wastes Andy Hardy).
He throws this shocking revelation down and then just flashes her the g’est look ever, waiting for her to piece it together. And that’s the story this series of screencaps tells. How awesome, am I right? Continuing in that vein, note how the mirror in the below shot continues to toy with ideas about perception, reality, objectification, and physical verisimilitude.
Laura has finally caught on and has in her hand the gun Neville gave her when he was being a pimp several screencaps back. I will not give away the final twist of who kills who or how. See how honorable I am?
Now you see what I mean about the cinematography in this movie? Victor Kemper did a top-notch job with what is essentially a very campy and “b” quality script, almost singlehandedly raising the level of quality to the movie. It’s that and the acting (mainly) that I think have made The Eyes of Laura Mars the giallo cult classic that it is.
This may be the longest Movie Moment yet. It was more like a Movie Half Hour, huh? Sorry. To wind things down, I need to throw a major thank you out to Screenmusings.org, from where I originally got all these grand screencaps. (Any reduction in quality they have suffered in my crops and resizes has been entirely my doing — these are, like, enormous, gorgeous HD quality original screencaps on screenmusings, take my word for it.) Check it out, tons of great movies, screencapped and beautiful.
MAX: That’s the Perfect Attendance Award and the Punctuality Award. I got those at Rushmore. I thought you could choose which one you like more, and you could wear that one, and I could wear the other.
“It’s the Muppet Show! With our very special guest star, Twiggy!”
“The Muppet Show,” Season 1, Episode 21: Twiggy, aka Lesley Lawson, nee Lesley Hornby, sings “In My Life,” (Lennon/McCartney, 1965) with a very simple, beautifully arranged wind and string orchestra backing her. Original air date December 19, 1976.
The picture montage that accompanies Twiggy’s lovely cover of this wonderful song is surprisingly moving. She was an icon during a time when beautiful people actually cared about life beyond their own pretty noses: yeah, they were high as kites most of the time, but you know what? They really wanted to make this planet a better place, they dreamed big about equality and freedom, and not just record sales and cheap retail clothing lines and scoring points with the press.
The scenes evoked by the images in the montage and the people featured in them are even better when you consider how much more she could include in such a montage now, having continued to enrich the world with her acting, singing, modeling, and dancing (she has won Golden Globes, released hit albums, performed for charity, toured the world, the works).
Twiggy stayed a genuine Model Citizen, not only remaining active on the fashion, stage, screen, and music scenes, but also in continuing to care for others in word and deed. Visit Breakthrough Breast Cancer if you want to be cool like Twiggy, because if you are reading this and care about looking good, you clearly have some free time to be pretty on the inside, too.
Anyway. This video would be truly perfect, if only I could get rid of the bug in the bottom left (the transparent logo of the Mouse Who Sold the World). But on the bright side, dig her groovy still-mod eyelashes and stovepipe arms in that faboosh red tux, am I right?? Everything old is new again: she could step on stage today and rock that shit, and be perfectly in style.
Me, she had dispensed from joining the group; saying, “She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a distance; but that until she heard from Bessie, and could discover by her own observation, that I was endeavouring in good earnest to acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner—something lighter, franker, more natural, as it were—she really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children.”
“What does Bessie say I have done?” I asked.
“Jane, I don’t like cavillers or questioners; besides, there is something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that manner. Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent.”
Do you remember the positive indignation of adult severity in the face of your early self-expression? I think the knife really twisted because you knew they were just flying by the seat of their pants, arbitrary jerks running scared, threatened by your stabs at mastery. They had no more particular power or experience than another kid facing you down in a play war.
Don’t forget that. Every person who attempts to wave some type of banner of authority in your face is probably prickly-sweaty under the arms and hopped up on 90% couch fort bravado. Poke their pile of cushions with a stick and see if it tumbles down.
Liberating negative space will never stop being a thing, no matter how much some people (read: Gorgeous George) may hate on it. Ain’t no shame in a name, Tina Fey!
Tina for Empire magazine. Here are two other images from the same photoshoot, you can click them to see them larger: they are brighter than this other shot but the pose or the cropping obscures the fact that she is writing that someone is “a bitch.” (Which makes me suspect the set of photos dates from around the time of Mean Girls.)
The Thought Experiment 