December 2011
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the top 15 books I read in 2011
#15: The White Album (Joan Didion, 1979) — I’d previously only read Play it as it Lays, which I think gave me the wrong idea of Didion; all that chic Hollywood nihilism, you know, not really my thing. But of course her nonfiction is great. The time-and-place specificity of these essays can be either thrilling (LOL @ fuckhead Jim Morrison) or boring (something about the L.A. freeway system in...
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“You pine, pine, pine but you don’t do anything. You just sit there like a...”
– Holy shit, Raising Hope is an underrated show.
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Time Traveling to Meet Meryl Streep in 1979
Me: Meryl, I have some bad news about your future.
1979 Streep: That's impossible. After my small but invigoratingly fresh performances in The Deer Hunter and Manhattan, everyone knows that I'm pretty much the future of American movies, as far as actresses go. I'm gonna be a really big deal.
Me: Yeah, you'll be a pretty big deal, but I'm here to warn you about the kind of movies you'll be making about thirty years from now. See—
1979 Streep: Thirty years! Why, I'll bet I'll have more than one Oscar by that time, and probably more nominations than any actor ever!
Me: That's actually accurate, but what I'm trying to tell you is—
1979 Streep: I'll be so respected! I'll have such integrity! I'll go on talk shows and act all shy like I'm not a movie star, like I'm a regular person, but I won't be a regular person because I'll be a fucking genius!
Me: Well look, I'm sure that will be nice, but have you given much thought to the kinds of movies you'll be making? Because what I'm trying to say is that your career will, after a point, pretty much consist exclusively of unimaginative, cartoonish burlesques of real-life figures like Julia Child and Margaret Thatcher in tedious biopics, with the occasional menopausal romcom and at least one disgustingly shitty musical.
1979 Streep: ...
Me: And even before that, you'll do a bunch of sort of respectable middlebrow movies that no one will really remember or care about. You will, arguably, never star in a truly great film. Your talent will be largely squandered.
1979 Streep: Well... if this is true, it probably has less to do with me than with disparity in Hollywood, right? The difficulty faced by women, especially women of a certain age, to find good roles?
Me: I don't know about that. You haven't heard of Julianne Moore yet, but she's as talented as you are, and she's gonna make a fantastic career for herself full of risky, interesting films — and she'll be doing that well into her forties and fifties. She won't feel bound by mainstream Hollywood, as you evidently will; she'll embrace independent filmmaking and she'll build a legacy of real artistry. Patricia Clarkson, too. And younger actresses are doing it right; Carey Mulligan doesn't have your talent, but she's seeking out great directors.
1979 Streep: But people will love me, right? I'll be a revered household name?
Me: Yeah, more or less.
1979 Streep: Then fuck you, I'll do what I want.
Me: Yeah, I guess it was unreasonable to expect that you'd change your career path based on the taste preferences of a time traveler. Take it easy.
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“In truth, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” isn’t about Sept. 11. It’s...”
– Manohla Dargis (!!)
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“She was through the door and down the road before she even heard the sound that...”
– Stephen Wright, M31: A Family Romance
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“He arranged the greeting cards, first transferring to the cardboard box all...”
– Stanley Elkin, A Bad Man
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“When I flipped to the [Gem Shopping Network], he was yelling “SHAME ON...”
– This made me stifle office laughter for a pretty long time.
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Partial list of astonishments in S. McQueen's...
• Wordless, cyclical sequence — repeatedly toggling between the subway and Fassbender’s apartment — that opens the film
• Mulligan’s unvarnished vocal performance of “New York, New York,” calling to mind Ida Lupino’s husky crooning in the 1948 proto-feminist noir Road House
• Tracking shot of Fassbender’s nighttime jog, a fleeting vision of modern Manhattan in...
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“‘Will my hatred spur me onward for a thousand sparlings?’ complained...”
– The beginning of the first installment of Jack Pendarvis’ serialized “fantasy” epic
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“He had never seen a tenement, a subway, a tall building. As far as he knew he...”
– Stanley Elkin, A Bad Man
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Incidents in moviegoing
Today I listened to a stranger weep uncontrollably.
This happened at a screening of Tyrannosaur, a new British film by actor-turned-director Paddy Considine, in the auxiliary second theater at the Music Box — a less-than-ideal venue for any movie, with a screen only slightly larger than your HDTV and an auditorium space only slightly less intimate than your living room. I never got a long look at...
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