The Rain Pounds in “Ponyo”

Of course I admire the films of Studio Ghibli, as led by the great Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, That being said, although I find much of the master’s work thrilling, I believe some of it is overly complicated and occasionally downright grim. But I’ve just seen Ponyo, a story oriented toward a young audience, and found it thoroughly charming, deftly blending a lively sense of magic with the studio’s long-time commitment to the wellbeing of the natural world.

 In watching Ponyo, I found myself thinking about “The Little Mermaid,” not the Disney animated film but rather the original Hans Christian Andersen story. That’s why I was pleased to discover that Miyazaki recalled reading Andersen’s tale as a young child and being bitterly disappointed by its ending. In Ponyo, which features along with the title character a good-hearted boy and his mother, five-year-old Sōsuke truly loves his mysterious playmate, and his devotion allows her to live on in his world instead of melting into seafoam. Ponyo takes place in and near the ocean: its young heroine evolves in the course of the film from a goldfish-like sea creature into a spunky little red-headed  girl. She’s magical both because of what she’s capable of doing (like expanding a toy boat until it’s large enough to sail on) and because she has an unstoppable love of life.

 In the early 2000s, Miyazaki was such a superstar that major English-speaking actors were eager to voice the characters for his films’ international versions. In 2004’s Howl’s Moving Castle, based on a British children’s novel, the central figure, Sophie, is played as a young girl by Emily Mortimer and as a much older one by the ageless Jean Simmons. Christian Bale voices the exotic Howl, and none other than Lauren Bacall is the Witch of the Waste.  

Four years later,  the English-language dub of Ponyo was directed by John Lasseter and other Pixar honchos. Ponyo herself is voiced by Miley Cyrus’s young sister, Noah, Sōsuke by Nick Jonas, and his mother by the indomitable Tina Fey. Key smaller roles are played by Matt Damon, Liam Neeson, and Cate Blanchett as an ethereal Goddess of Mercy. And the clutch of colorful oldsters (a popular element in many Ghibli films) is voiced by some of Hollywood’s finest: Cloris Leachman, Lily Tomlin, and Betty White.

 As always in Ghibli films, characters reflect anime traditions and do not look especially Asian. For central roles, wild red hair and a tall, thin frame seem particularly popular. For instance, these traits help to identify Neeson’s character, the ambiguous semi-human Fujimoto, who considers himself Ponyo’s father as well as the protector of the natural world. But the film’s landscape, full of seaside crags. step promontories, and wild waves, unquestionably reflects Japan’s own dramatic topography. As, in the wake of Ponyo’s adoption of life on land, the natural order gets skewed, the ocean boils up into a terrifying maelstrom, threatening both ships at sea and homes on the shore. Giant waves rock tiny boats full of fleeing citizens, capturing the sense of heightened natural turmoil we know from Tokugawa-period Japanese woodblock prints (One classic example: Katsushika Hokusai’s iconic 1831 “Great Wave Off Kanagawa”). Meanwhile torrential rain pounds the land, submerging whole villages. The animation in these scenes is powerful indeed, adding hugely to the dramatic force  of what could in other hands be a sugary-sweet little tale.

 The weather gods tell us to expect intense El Niño conditions later this year. That means, at least where I live, heavy rains pounding the very dry earth. Who know? Maybe more Ghibli inspiration. 

 

When a Face Emerges from the Crowd

When I was in, perhaps, the seventh grade, I enjoyed a weekly trip to the local library with my mom and little sister. As a voracious reader with a special appreciation for stage musicals and comedies, I would curl up in the theatre section and read to my heart’s content. One day I came across a work I didn’t know: A Face in the Crowd, by Budd Schulberg. The title and the author’s  name were both unfamiliar to me. But I was well-acquainted with the star of the production. Andy Griffith, who had appeared on the Broadway stage and then the film adaptation of No Time for Sergeants. This was the comic tale of a hillbilly bumpkin drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II. My father, a veteran himself, loved good-hearted humorous takes on military protocol, and so I saw—and adored—the film at an early age. With Andy Griffith as the leading man, I  assumed A Face in the Crowd would be equally lovable and funny.

 Wrong! This 1957 work (which turns out to have been a film script based on Schulberg’s original story) does star Griffith as a country boy not much used to sophisticated folk. But he’s far from good-hearted. When we first meet him, he’s drunk and disorderly in a smalltown Southern jail, one that just happens to be visited by an attractive young radio producer (Patricia Neal) searching out local color. Discovering his gift of gab and his easy way with an acoustic guitar, she christens him “Lonesome” Rhodes, and helps turn him into the star of his own local radio show. Then TV comes calling. Soon he’s attracting serious attention, especially from women of all ages. When I discovered his sexual adventuring, both with Neal and with a young high school cheerleader (Lee Remick was introduced in this role), I was seriously shocked. (Needless to say, in the late-1950s, the physical nature of these relationships was not shown on screen, but I certainly got the message. And I’ve always considered A Face in the Crowd  my jump into adult reading material.)

 Today I’m a lot less easily shocked. But A Face in the Crowd still startles in its prescience about the way demagogues get started. Lonesome Rhodes is not simply interested in pretty women. He also quickly realizes that, thanks to the new medium of television, his homespun charm is his ticket into the halls of power. We see him instinctively discovering how to spread a sponsor’s message for an essentially worthless product. And before long he’s advising a major U.S. Senate candidate on how to improve upon his stuffy image, by way of a cute nickname and some new folksy mannerisms.  

 Essentially, the country boy is turning into a monster, one who is well aware that—thanks to the hold he has on his enormous TV audience—there’s nothing to stop him from making his own power grab in the near future. Surely we can well imagine him joking and crooning his way into the White House. Sound familiar? Back in the day, screenwriter Budd Schulberg and director Elia Kazan pointed to Will Rogers, Arthur Godfrey, and other media folk of the era as partial models for their central character, along with preacher Billy Graham and populist politician Huey Long. Today there are some obvious celebrity types who’ve made far bigger gains in the political world. Thanks to their street smarts as well as their ability to break all the rules and come out smiling, it sometimes seems as though nothing can stop them. 

 

Ingrid on Insta

There’s a special kick in discovering a modest indie previously unknown to me. Ingrid Goes West sounds, at the outset, like a folksy comedy tracing a young woman’s arrival in a small western town—an update on Cat Ballou, maybe. Hardly! This modest 2017 release starring Aubrey Plaza (whom I realize now was the engaging star of My Old Ass) mashes together laughs and chills in a wonderfully contemporary way. Though in 2017 Plaza herself was hardly a newcomer to showbiz, the writing/directing team of Matt Spicer and David Branson Smith were total newbies, who deservedly took home the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance, as well as an Independent Spirit nod for Best First Feature. As the instructor, through UCLA Extension, of many aspiring filmmakers, I love seeing what can be done with a small but talented cast and a timely premise.

 Ingrid Goes West is a darkly comic satire on the way social media feeds can ruin young lives. Ingrid, who starts out in Pittsburgh, is obsessed with the would-be celebrities who flaunt their cool lifestyles via Instagram. Following her mother’s death and an embarrassing exploit that shows her the wisdom of leaving town quickly, she takes her entire inheritance (some $60,000, as I recall) in cash and heads for the west coast. There she scores a rental near Venice Beach and focuses all her energy on befriending hot influencer Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen), who is delighted to accept her as a new (and clearly well-heeled) bestie. On long girls-day-out jaunts to Joshua Tree, they trade confidences. But Ingrid never reveals how badly she wants to be part of Taylor’s casually hip—and very well publicized—world.

 Yet Ingrid is making enemies as well as friends. She can easily get around her sweet-natured neighbor (the engaging O’Shea Jackson Jr.), a would-be screenwriter who soon loves her almost as much as he does Batman. But Taylor’s husband, who left the corporate world at Taylor’s urging to become a would-be artist, is immune to the charms of social media, and is increasingly uneasy about Ingrid’s near-constant presence. Then there’s Taylor’s hunky but slightly menacing brother, newly arrived from a sweet stay in Paris, who for understandable reasons knows a grifter when he sees one. 

 As the film gets going and the bad behavior escalates, you can hardly call it comedic. I was, frankly, disappointed when Ingrid, finally realizing the error of her ways, seems to publicly acknowledge that she’s a total fraud. But the sappy ending that appeared to be on tap at this point quickly converts—via a great shifting of gears—into a cheeky and uproarious coda that I would not want to spoil.

 Plaza (who also stepped in as one of the film’s producers) has the gift of being able to veer from sweet to scary, and from pathetic to obnoxious, at the drop of a hat. I’ll look forward to seeing her onscreen again, especially if she continues to back edgy material that suits her particular gifts. There’s a lot of smart writing too, and I love the way in-the-moment texting to one’s followers is introduced into this story from its opening scenes onward.  

 As a screenwriting instructor who teaches advanced rewrite classes through UCLA Extension, I am open to stories of all kinds, including those that require far-flung locations and casts of thousands. But I particularly appreciate the small, clever scripts that can make do with a few good actors and limited locations. Ingrid Goes West, with its tiny cast and present-day SoCal vibe, is a wonderful way to jump into the bigtime.

 

 

 

"8 Women": A French-Fried Musical

The French, as we know, are in love with old American cinema. They adore Hitchcock thrillers; they adore female-centric social comedies with couture by Edith Head; they adore what they’ve helpfully named film noir; they adore old MGM musicals. That’s why it has somehow occurred to them to combine all these genres into what Wikipedia calls “a 2002 jukebox musical comedy mystery film.” Based on a 1958 stage play, 8 Femmes (or, in English, 8 Women) is a mildly amusing entertainment that features some of France’s greatest female film stars: everyone from the still-gorgeous Catherine Deneuve to the hyper-sexy Fanny Ardent to the much-admired Isabelle Huppert to the now-octogenarian Danielle Darrieux, along with several attractive younger players.

 The set-up is familiar from many old plays and movies of this type. We’re in the great room of a large country home, where a wealthy family and its retainers are all preparing for a snowy Christmas Eve celebration. Deneuve, the lady of the house, has just arrived home with her vivacious elder daughter, newly back from college. There to greet her are the wheelchair-bound family matriarch (Darrieux), Deneuve’s neurotic sister (Huppert), and Deneuve’s plain-jane younger daughter, along with the family cook and a sexy chambermaid (Emmanuelle Béart) whom no one seems to trust. Because this is a musical, mother and daughters quickly launch into a satiric song about their homelife, "Papa t'es plus dans le coup" ("Dad, You're Out of Touch")

 But where is the pater familias about whom they sing? Upstairs in his bedchamber, with a knife in his back. Suddenly we’re in a whodunit, with everyone apparently having a motive to murder the wealthy but not exactly virtuous man. An additional suspect eventually shows up: Ardent as the victim’s sultry (and financially needy) sister. That makes eight women altogether: they all have their secrets, which get more and more lurid, and they all have musical numbers to perform, leading up to the elderly Darrieux’s solo rendition of the lugubrious “Il n’y a pas amour heureux” (“There is no happy love.”)  Eventually, the not-very-interesting mystery of Marcel’s death is solved, and we can all go home.

 I’ve read that François Ozon, who both wrote and directed this film, originally wanted to do a French remake of George Cukor’s 1939 all-female The Women, though legal issues got in the way.. Alas, the catty wit of the Cukor original (adapted by Anita Loos and Jane Murfin from the play by Claire Boothe Luce) seems to be missing here, along with The Women’s ultra-sharp delineation of social mores. And the determination to make this movie into both a murder mystery and a musical leads to a failure on both counts.

 Though I personally love musicals, I’m honestly not sure why the French are so keen to embrace them. They did have one genuine musical hit, Jacques Demy’s 1964 The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which could hardly be mistaken for a Hollywood musical comedy. It’s a beautiful film, with gorgeous art direction and a lovely score by Michel Legrand, but there’s absolutely nothing comic about this story of love and loss. Three years later, Demy tried for a lighter tone in another musical, Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (The Young Girls of Rochefort), which again stars Deneuve, along with her sister Françoise Dorléac, and even finds a place for George Chakiris and Gene Kelly. For years I wanted to see this film, but when I finally did I was sadly disappointed. It’s flat and inconsequential: no fizz, no real joy. Much like that strange hybrid, 8 Femmes. 

 

Telling the Truth about “True Lies”

I admit I’m not a huge fan of James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster, Titanic. Still, I have to admire Cameron’s cleverness in combining two eternally popular film genres. Most disaster movies (as well as a stage musical, based on the Titanic’s sinking. that played on Broadway in the late nineties) rely on a broad canvas. Their goal is to cut across social lines, revealing how a single cataclysmic event upends the lives of a wide swath of people from various backgrounds and economic levels. Some survive; some die; life goes on. (In the case of the Broadway musical, there are a lot of forgettable ballads along the way. And I cannot remember a single character who actually stood out from the throng.)

 Cameron’s take on the sinking of the huge British ocean liner by an iceberg while on its 1912 maiden voyage is not entirely different from what I’ve described above. There’s a cast of what seem like thousands, and class differences are very much a part of the story. But Cameron is smart enough (as both the film’s screenwriter and its director) not to spread his gaze too wide. Instead, he combines his disaster film with a strong focus on a single couple of his own invention, two attractive young people from very different social circumstances who meet aboard the doomed ship and violate social norms by falling passionately in love.  So the disaster film is combined with a doomed romance that audiences around the world quickly took to their hearts.

 Cameron’s talent for genre-mashing did not begin with Titanic. In 1994, he released a film with a wonderfully oxymoronic title: True Lies. In its opening moments, it’s easy to think of a James Bond thriller. There’s a lordly European manor, dusted with snow. While inside well-dressed couples dance and shmooze, a man encased in what looks like a SCUBA suit is descending through the icy grounds on the perimeter. Somehow he surfaces inside the manor, where he quickly peels off the SCUBA gear and appears, sleek and slim, in a dapper tuxedo. Quickly he’s inside the party, making small-talk with guests and engaging one particular lovely in a sexy tango. OMG—it’s Arnold Schwarzenegger, and it’s pretty clear he’s a spy in the Sean Connery mode.

 But we’re not exactly in James Bond territory. Once he’s done with the mission, which involves checking out a Middle Eastern terrorist group called the Crimson Jihad, Arnold’s Harry Tasker returns home to the DC suburbs to rejoin his wife Helen, played by Jamie Lee Curtis. Knowing nothing about her husband’s days as a counter-terrorism expert working under deep cover for the U.S. government, she assumes he’s a mild-mannered computer salesman whose life is totally lacking in excitement. And, frankly, she could use some excitement. Which is why she’s vulnerable to the advances of a would-be man of mystery (he’s wonderfully played by Bill Paxton). And this of course is what prompts Harry to stop saving the world, at least temporarily, in order to focus instead on winning back his wife, by any means necessary. There’s much hilarity in this classic domestic comedy, which eventually folds in the defeat of the bad guys and a wonderfully satisfying (and sexy) ending sequence.

 Schwarzenegger, who had starred in Cameron’s career-making—and hardly funny—The Terminator (1984) shows himself here to be a polished comic actor. And I can’t say enough about Jamie Lee Curtis, whose transformation from bored housewife to would-be vamp is hilariously funny. At some moments she reminded me of the great Carol Burnett, who made awkwardness into an artform. Bravo to all! 

Sniffing The Rose

Though I’m a Baby Boomer in good standing, I was never much for rock concerts. I never saw Janis Joplin perform live, and I never (until last night) saw The Rose, the 1979 Joplin-inspired film that became the auspicious big-screen debut of Bette Midler. Yes, I knew the powerful title song, and I was certainly familiar with some of the big names in the cast, including Alan Bates as Rose’s hard-assed manager and Harry Dean Stanton as the surly singer-songwriter who puts her in her place. But I went into this film with a certain skepticism about watching yet another movie about a rocker coping with personal demons (see, for instance, the 2018 Freddy Mercury biopic starring an Oscar-winning Rami Malek). One big difference: the character of Rose is female, with all that implies about being a gifted but deeply impressionable woman in what is very much a man’s world.

 So what did I think of The Rose? I was dazzled, as almost everyone has been, by Midler’s powerfully unhinged lead performance. (She was Oscar-nominated, but lost to Sally Field as Norma Rae.) As directed by the talented Mark Rydell, himself a former Juilliard-trained jazz musician, the other actors were strong too. But I admit I was somewhat frustrated by Bo Goldman’s screenplay, which—though giving us an intimate look at the life of a touring rock star—never really explored the forces that had turned Mary Rose Foster into the talented but troubled rock star she was.

 For me perhaps the most gratifying viewing came courtesy of the second disc in my library copy of The Rose. In an interview filmed for the Criterion Collection release of The Rose in 2015, Bette Midler herself (looking none the worse for wear) candidly explained how she came to identify with a fierce on-stage performer who was not wholly unlike herself. She particularly praised costume designer Theoni V. Aldredge for providing her with floaty, sparkly garments—many of them rose-colored—that captured the character’s dynamic onstage aura. Director Mark Rydell  explained to an interviewer how his own musical background contributed to the making of this film. (Rydell, who died just a few weeks ago at the age of 97, was also responsible for directing such stellar flicks as Cinderella Liberty and On Golden Pond.) Wanting to truly capture what he called “the strain and pain of performing,” Rydell insisted to his studio bosses that his leading lady be an actual singer, not a great actress like Jane Fonda equipped with a dubbed singing voice.

 But my favorite interviewee was cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, who talked at length about his stylized use of light and perspective. The several outdoor concert scenes in the film were shot with the help of some 6000 extras (who were instructed by Rydell not to clap wildly for Midler’s Rose unless she had truly won them over). To capture the onstage performances at one go, Zsigmond enlisted such ace cinematographers as Conrad Hall and Haskell Wexler to show up and help shoot the concert footage from their own chosen perspective, while cameraman David Myers, a veteran of rock ‘n’ roll documentaries, provided his own take on the onstage action.

 Though the film’s concert scenes are indeed spectacular,  Zsigmond and his interviewer (the cinematographer John Bailey) also pointed to a dynamic cinematographic moment in which Midler as Rose cruises through a gay men’s bathhouse. There’s also the essential twilight scene in which Rose—ensconced in a telephone booth at the edge of her hometown’s darkened football field—makes a fateful decision that will change her life.

 

 

Bob Mackie, Naked? (A farewell to a man of the cloth)

 

(On the occasion of Bob Mackie's passing, I can't resist re-posting this tribute to his talent and wit.) 

I met Bob Mackie circa 1981, on the fabled MGM studio lot. We were on the set for Herbert Ross’s ambitious musical, Pennies from Heaven, starring Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters. They played dreamers who (almost) survive the Great Depression by fantasizing about living lives filled with music, dance, and luxuries like spectacular clothing. Needless to say, this was a dream assignment for Mackie, whose chief claim to fame at the time was his flamboyant duds for TV divas like Carol Burnett and Cher.

 As a big fan of the Carol Burnett Show, I asked the amiable blond Mackie (wearing a polo shirt and looking like a kid) whether he was responsible solely for the lavish gowns in which Burnett greeted her weekly studio audiences. In fact, he explained, he did everything related to costuming for the long-running weekly variety show. This meant bunny suits for the dancers, when needed, and goofy garb for Burnett in her various skits. It turns out—as Burnett herself is quick to admit—that it was Mackie who came up with the crowning sight-gag in a movie parody of Gone With the Wind that got one of the show’s all-time biggest laughs. Burnett plays Scarlett O’Hara, forced to greet a post-war Rhett Butler in a dress hastily crafted from her plantation’s green velvet curtains. When she wafts down Tara’s majestic staircase, viewers can’t help guffawing: her home-made gown still retains its original curtain rod.

 Burnett is one of many celebs interviewed by Matthew Miele for his lively 2024 documentary, Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion. Its title refers to the tantalizingly sheer sheath gowns designed by Mackie first for Mitzi Gaynor and eventually for Cher, who—with her scintillatingly slender figure—has been perhaps his ultimate muse. His glittery gowns hint at nudity but leave the wearer’s private areas discreetly covered, though oh so sexy. For Mackie, all this now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t glitz is fun to design, and has led him to costume everyone from Vegas show girls to Barbie. Another of his more unusual clients in Elton John, who encouraged Mackie’s outrageous side, allowing him to come up with a Donald Duck ensemble and an Amadeus-style frock coat, as well as a sequined baseball uniform for a sold-out concert at Dodger Stadium.

 It's clear that Mackie adores pretty women (and pretty men like RuPaul), but in fact he seems to like pretty much everyone. The documentary carefully hints at his sexual orientation, but also shows homey scenes of the now-eighty-plus-year-old Mackie (grey-haired but still boyish) cozily hanging out with his recently-discovered granddaughter and her children on a sunny patio. (His son Robin, a Hollywood make-up artist, died in 1993 at age 33 after an apparently turbulent life.) Though he dresses top stars, Mackie seems wholly comfortable—even overjoyed—to be dressing conservatively and blending into family surroundings.

 Mackie’s talent for glamour has earned him fame and fortune, as well as many accolades from his peers. (The film opens with him modestly accepting myriad awards from fellow designers and critics.) But the top Hollywood honors have eluded him. He has three long-ago Oscar nominations—for Lady Sings the Blues, Funny Lady, and Pennies from Heaven. In the documentary, Carol Burnett expresses outrage that the 1982 Oscar for costume design went not to Pennies from Heaven but to the year’s big film, Chariots of Fire. In this well-crafted period Olympic Games drama, veteran designer Milena Canonero’s cast mostly wear track suits that look like long underwear. Ah well! I guess no one can win them all.