Oscars 2015: Staying Weird, Staying Alive

So another Oscar ceremony is in the books. I’m not unique, I’m sure, in finding my greatest satisfaction in the unexpectedly pointed remarks of many of the winners, as they received their statuettes for films that touched (however lightly) on serious matters.  There was Patricia Arquette’s shout-out in favor of equal pay for women, which elicited Meryl Streep’s enthusiastic “You go, girl!”  There was Eddie Redmayne, honored for playing Stephen Hawking, symbolically giving his award to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis sufferers (though he made clear the Oscar would live at his house). Soon afterward, winner Julianne Moore was equally eloquent about the need to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. Triple-winner Alejandro González Iñarritu needled the audience about immigration issues, and the writers of “Glory” (the Oscar-winning song from Selma) both sang and spoke so powerfully about civil rights that it was no surprise to see Academy members with tears rolling down their cheeks.

Even yawn-worthy categories like Best Documentary Short Subject led to poignant speeches. I had not heard of Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1, but the words of its co-directors will stay with me, especially Dana Perry’s mention of the son that died by his own hand, and her plea that “We should talk about suicide out loud.” Who would have guessed that an hour or so later, Graham Moore—accepting a screenwriting Oscar for The Imitation Game—would announce that at age sixteen he too had tried to kill himself, “because I felt weird and I felt different and I felt like I did not belong.” He addressed himself directly to “that kid out there who feels like she’s weird or she’s different or she doesn’t fit in anywhere. Yes, you do. I promise you do.  Stay weird, stay different, and then when it’s your turn and you are standing on this stage, please pass the same message to the next person who comes along.”

As always, a memorable (though somber) part of the evening was dedicated to those Hollywood figures who had passed away since last year’s ceremony. The painter who’d provided portraits of the deceased beautifully captured the exuberance of Geoffrey Holder, the husband of my very first dance teacher. And I was moved to see recognition for others I’d interviewed over the years: cinematographer Gordon Willis, screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr., and particularly Charles Champlin, veteran film critic of the Los Angeles Times.

Hollywood generally doesn’t love movie critics (though Life Itself, a documentary feature about the life and career of the late Roger Ebert, was short-listed for one of this year’s nominations.) But the film industry had a rare affection for Charles Champlin, who was considered both knowledgeable and fair-minded. By the time I interviewed Champlin in 2008, he was long retired and suffering from health issues. When I asked about the films of the Sixties, he simply didn’t remember certain matters on which he had once boldly taken a stand.  I came home with one of his books, The Movies Grow Up: 1940-1980, which begins by explaining that “my generation grew up with the movies and without television. The movies entertained us, inspired us, consoled us, shaped us profoundly; taught us (although not invariably wisely or well) and attempted to spare us from some bitter truths about the world.” By the time I met Champlin, though, he was thinking less about movies than about, well, life itself: “The world slips away from us very fast, I think. It’s like sand through your fingers. You think you’ve got it all in your hand, but it’s gone through your fingers.”  Rest in peace, Chuck.  

Coming soon: on Saturday, May 2, 2915, I'll be on a panel discussing "The Secrets of Interviewing Famous People." It's part of the American Society of Journalists and Authors annual three-day conference in New York City. Click here for more info.

R is for Roger Corman, and Roger Ebert, and Russ Meyer: An Unholy Trinity

Today’s a special day here in Movieland: my chance to salute three memorable men whose names begin with the letter R. The first is my former boss, Roger Corman, who plucked me from a doctoral program in English literature at UCLA and made a dishonest woman out of me. By which I mean, of course, that at New World Pictures he taught me the fine art of making and distributing exploitation films, saving a buck by any means necessary. For instance, in order to drum up free publicity, he asked me to invent bogus news items involving major Hollywood stars who were supposedly appearing in our cinematic versions of public-domain literary works. That’s why you can find, in a long-ago issue of the Hollywood Reporter, an announcement that Roger Corman has signed Orson Welles to star in New World’s adaptation of Melville’s The Confidence Man.

In the late 1950s, while Roger was coming of age as a filmmaker, another World War II veteran was directing his first films. Russ Meyer, like Roger Corman, made low-budget movies with a high quotient of sex and violence. Especially sex. Meyer began as a photographer, and big-busted women were his specialty. If they talked -- and acted -- tough, he liked them all the better. One of his 1965 movies epitomizes his tastes: it’s called Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Before I was hired by Roger Corman, a friend named Stan Berkowitz applied for the same job. It’s no surprise that I beat him out. Roger is impressed by advanced academic degrees like mine, and he prefers that his assistants be female. It’s not simply that he’s looking for young ladies to fetch him coffee. Several generations of women in Hollywood (including Gale Anne Hurd of Terminator fame) can attest he believes women work harder, work cheaper, and are more loyal. That’s why he entrusts them with technical positions as well as office jobs, pioneering their ascent into the ranks of producers and directors.

My friend Stan ended up working on a Russ Meyer film, Supervixens. On the set he saw plenty of women, most of them flaunting the audacious “Guns of Navarone” bazooms that were Meyer's stock in trade. But on Meyer’s production team there was not a female to be found, and the pneumatic starlets were strictly off-limits. Meyer made movies to feed his personal obsessions. He wanted his crews, like himself, in a permanent state of arousal.

Today Corman, at eighty-seven, is still churning out monster movies. Meyer passed away in 2004, at age eighty-two, though his mind had abandoned him a decade earlier. He might have been his own most perceptive critic when, in a 1978 interview, he told a young reporter, “If I wasn't so into tits, I probably could've been a great filmmaker.”

And as for Roger Ebert, whose death we all recently mourned, where does he fit in? We knew Ebert as a Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic, as well as a man who was courageous in the face of his own mortality. To his credit, Ebert was no snob, and he freely admitted to enjoying Russ Meyer’s tawdry but energetic brand of filmmaking. In 1970, when big studios were desperately trying to be hip, Meyer was actually hired by Twentieth Century-Fox to direct a sequel of sorts to Valley of the Dolls. For Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Meyer concocted a baroque spoof chockfull of drugs, porn, nudity, gender-bending, and a final burst of mayhem reminiscent of the 1969 Manson murders. And yes, Roger Ebert wrote the screenplay. It was not exactly his finest hour.

To celebrate Roger Corman’s 87^th birthday (a few weeks late), I’m hereby announcing a big sale on my Corman Kindle ebook, Roger Corman: Blood-Sucking Vampires, Flesh-Eating Cockroaches, and Driller Killers, for the bargain price of $2.99. This was the book that just got a rave in last week’s Wall Street Journal, as one of reviewer Carl Rollyson's five favorite Hollywood biographies. The sale price should show up on the Kindle site by April 21, and the last day of the sale will be May 4, so come one, come all!