August | 2012 | Dave's Strange World

“Reds” (1981) dir. Warren Beatty

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Warren Beatty allegedly HATED this trailer (at least according to Peter Biskind’s terrific and lengthy bio on Beatty called “Star”). But I very distinctly remember seeing it when I was 11 years old … before some Burt Reynolds comedy about “surrogate motherhood” (yes … my thoughts exactly) … and being incredibly pumped to see “Reds” when it got released months later. Again, I was 11-years old in 1981, living in Virginia (arguably THE most conservative state in the USA), weened on “Star Wars” and “Smokey and the Bandit,” and this lengthy trailer got me excited about seeing a 3-hour plus film about an American Communist during the Russian Revolution. Maybe it was the rousing strains of “The Internationale” playing during the last two minutes that did it for me. Anyway, the movie didn’t disappoint and it’s still astonishing that a big-budget Hollywood film with this subject matter ever got green-lit, financed, and produced. Seriously, NOTHING like this on this kind of scale would ever be made today in Hollywood. The last hurrah of the 1970s “New Hollywood.”

“The Thin Ice” from “Pink Floyd The Wall” (1982) dir. Alan Parker

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One of my favorite songs from Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” and one of the sequences from the movie that I continue to find the most powerful. First of all, I love the song’s 1950s doo-wop feel filtered through a 1970s Quaalude fog. However, the way this sequence was shot and edited by Parker is consistently amazing to watch. The transition from horrific war footage to the lead character’s trashed hotel room as the vocals change from David Gilmour to Roger Waters as the camera pans over to the pool is a sequence that always gives me goosebumps.

“The Man Who Fell to Earth” (1976) dir. Nicolas Roeg

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Another trailer I saw when I was 6 or 7 that seriously freaked me out. This played before a Disney (?!?) film of all things. The scene where the family wearing the white space suits vanishes gave me nightmares. I also thought it was odd that the actor they kept referring to as “David” (David Bowie) looked like a woman. I think that’s William Shatner narrating the trailer.

“Carrie” (1976) dir. Brian DePalma

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Seeing this trailer for “Carrie” at the age of 7 seriously warped my fragile little mind. Of course, my parents were not insane enough to take me to this movie (it was R-rated… and a hard-R at that for the time, considering the violence and frontal nudity). But seeing that bucket of blood hit Sissy Spacek and the screen turning red along with scenes from the following bloodbath and those crazed eyes of Spacek’s really unnerved me (and of course, made me really really want to see it). Over 35 years later, it’s still one of the best trailers I’ve ever seen.

RIP, Tony Scott (“True Romance”)

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Director Tony Scott died in an apparent suicide yesterday. While some have dismissed him as a commercial hack, he directed a lot of terrifically energetic and entertaining films including “The Last Boy Scout,” “Crimson Tide,” and one of my Top 5 all-time favorite films “True Romance,” which was written by Quentin Tarantino. Scott directed huge commercial films, but was so entranced by the “True Romance” script, he took a chance on it when no one else would and Scott’s interest piqued interest in Tarantino’s other work which was unproduced at the time. Here’s my all-time favorite scene from “True Romance.”

“Work” – Lou Reed & John Cale

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From Reed and Cale’s song cycle about Andy Warhol (“Songs for Drella”). A really funny and moving song about Warhol’s work ethic. Favorite lyrics: “Andy said a lot of things … I stored them all away in my head … Sometimes when I can’t decide what I should do,
I think what would Andy have said … He’d probably say ‘You think too much … That’s ’cause there’s work that you don’t want to do.'”

“Debaser” – The Pixies

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I remember hearing this late one night in a friend’s car back in 1989 and immediately bought the “Doolittle” CD when the record store opened the next day. While many quibble about what the best Pixies album is, I’ve never heard a negative thing said about “Doolittle.” And thanks to my undergraduate film class I was able to catch the Luis Bunuel reference in the lyrics and for five minutes, I felt smart and cool.

“The Social Network” dir. David Fincher (2010)

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In an otherwise laudatory review of David Fincher’s 2010 film “The Social Network,” Garry Mulholland offers this astute observation: “… (the film) plays one of the oldest Hollywood tricks in the book: the capitalist comfort-food trick. You know the one. You’ve spent your last pennies entering the cinema. All you can think about is your s–t job and whether you can afford the mortgage and you kids’ new shoes this month. And the next couple of hours of pictures puts an arm around you and tells you what you need to hear in order to just keep going until someone finally pays you a pitiful pension and consigns you to final years of visiting stately homes and being horrible to your family. It tells you the Rich aren’t happy. That they’re not as nice as you. That the reason that they have everything is actually because they’re not as nice as you … And this one has real legs, because it’s about real millionaires who are still alive and didn’t sue anyone when they were portrayed as bitter, greedy, elitist, misogynist a–wipes. So it must be true. Ergo, the reason you must accept your lot and play the game is because people don’t get money and power in this world unless they are soulless monsters. So accept your place, and like it. Because you’re nice.” Ouch!

By the way, Mulholland’s book on teen films (where this observation comes from), “Stranded at the Drive-In” is one of the most brilliant collections of cultual criticism I’ve seen in a long time. If you have any remote interest in this subject, pick this up IMMEDIATELY!!! And (yes, yes), it’s available in Kindle format.

“Wise Up” – From “Magnolia” dir. PT Anderson (1999)

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From PT Anderson’s 1999 film “Magnolia,” the audacious scene where all of the lead characters (who are experiencing incredible emotional trauma) sing along to Aimee Mann’s tremendously emotional song “Wise Up.” A brilliant and artistically ballsy scene and one of the reasons PT Anderson is our generation’s greatest filmmaker.

“The Boys are Back in Town” – Bus Boys

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Continuing the Walter Hill thread from the last post is this seminal R&B song prominently used in Hill’s 1982 film “48 Hours” The film featured Eddie Murphy’s debut as a film actor and 30 years later, is still one of the most electrifying debut performances in movie history. The song is amazing and the Bus Boys, a tremendously underrated R&B / rock band from the early 1980s, were like the Blasters, albeit with more of a Stax-Volt feel. Another great band that didn’t fit into any prescribed niche and therefore, slipped through the cracks commercially.