Oh Madeline

A friend of mine suggested that we nominate Madeline Kahn for gay icon status.  Maybe she is a gay icon somewhere already.  Maybe she is a gay icon everywhere already (I live in Ottawa, I don't hear everything).  She probably was a gay icon in 1975, maybe without knowing it.  She probably was an icon for men who were gay without knowing it in 1975.  She was fired from the cast of Mame by Lucille Ball, which must automatically make you a gay icon of some kind.

I think that one could safely nominate the entire cast of the movie Clue for gay icon status.  Maybe the movie Clue had no other purpose but to bring together gay icons character actors from 1985.  I know that even living in Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, Clue called out to me, and had to be seen.  Even if it meant busing to Penhorn Mall by myself to see it.  Even if it meant having to watch it.

Madeline Kahn is crowded out in Clue, as she was in most of the movies she was in.  Maybe it is actually better this way -- because a little of Madeline went a long way.  But, she is perfect in every role she is in, and was usually the best thing in the movie -- which is not a back-handed compliment, because she was in Paper Moon, What's Up, Doc?, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein.  I don't know of any other comedienne who was nominated for two Oscars. I notice that Premiere magazine placed her role as Lili Von Shtupp in Blazing Saddles as the #74 best performance in movie history.  I can't think of three better performances, personally. 

Madeline's characters were always women struggling with a barely contained hysteria (women on the verge of a nervous breakdown).  She wasn't ever trying to be funny or winking at the audience -- the performance was inherently funny because of what was going on underneath.  The characters have the same spirit as successful drag acts: the teetering on the edge, the risk of a total collapse.  This type of tension is what I like in roles by Teri Garr, Shelley Duvall, Lesley Ann Warren, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Catherine O'Hara, Rosanna Arquette, Parker Posey.  Women struggling to live by their own rules in worlds that think they are pathetic or ridiculous.

There is something very self-contained about all of these actresses.  Even when they are interacting with other actors or characters on the screen, they are, essentially, living in the tightly-sealed worlds of their characters' self-delusions.  That is why the comedic roles are funny and, with little difference except context, the serious roles are so heartbreaking (Teri Garr in Tootsie) or scary (Shelley Duvall in Three Women) or simultaneously funny, hearbreaking and scary (Teri Garr and Catherine O'Hara in Afterhours). I think these are difficult roles too -- the road is littered with bad attempts: Kim Basinger in Blind Date comes to mind.  Drew Barrymore in Grey Gardens.

I don't know if men do this kind of barely-contained hysteria as well or as often.  Maybe Gene Wilder and a couple of others.  The great character actors (male) have tended towards the stoic or the sneaky.  The nearly-neurotic appear to be the domain of the ladies.  On film. A quote from Madeline: "It's acceptable for men to act the fool. When women try, they're considered aggressive and opinionated." 

Ryan's Hope

A blond actor with a slight overbite and clear, vacant eyes.  Ambition that was never quite matched by talent.  Overtaken, in the eyes of the paparazzi and the tastemakers, by a blonde bombshell wife.  Despite being in some first-rate movies, always more closely aligned with the B film and the B tabloid.  A life rumoured to be anxious, dissolute, and maybe not compatible with the family responsibilities presented.

The parallels of Ryan Phillippe and Ryan O'Neal.  Those aside, though, two of the movies that I have seen again in the last year that I have really really enjoyed have both starred Ryan O'Neal.  So, while the clock is ticking, there is still hope for Ryan the younger too.  (And we will always have Gosford Park.)

Paper Moon and What's Up, Doc? are both very good movies that are not as popular as they were when they were released or as lesser films from the era (early 70's) now are.  They were both directed by Peter Bogdanovich, although this doesn't necessarily guarantee quality.  Shortly after seeing them both again, I happened upon Mask, another of his films, playing on TVO.  It is so dated and phony you get the feeling that Kristy McNichol is going to show up as a love interest at any second.  (You may remember Mask as being a movie of quality because it helped make Cher a movie star.  Not true: Mask starts off corny and just gets more corny from there...once Laura Dern shows up as the blind debutante with the heart of gold, it is truly time to pull the plug.  Apparently, some directors start large and end up with cameos on the Sopranos.  No explaining it.)

Paper Moon and What's Up, Doc? are very different.  Paper Moon is best known for getting Tatum O'Neal an Oscar and probably not much else.  She really is precocious (and smokes with as much bravado as John Wayne), but what stays with you is the look of the movie and how all the elements work so well together.  The movie is funny and quirky, but the over-riding feeling is sadness and hopelessness.  And Ryan O'Neal is really good as the lovable grifter who would rather not have to raise a young girl. I don't know if he is essentially playing himself opposite his own daughter, but he is natural and honest.  The movie has a lot of energy, but it has the same muffled, desolate feeling that I remember "The Last Picture Show" having.

In What's Up, Doc? he is the straight man to Barbra Streisand's kooky comedic role.  The idea of Ryan O'Neal as an uptight professor of geology is a stretch, but it doesn't really matter because they seem to work well together onscreen and you can feel they like each other. Barbra is even unpretentious and funny.  The zingers and star-turns pass lightly and without too much ado, in that way that they often do in movies made in that era.  The movie is a screwball comedy, or tries to be a throwback to screwball comedies, and I think about 90% of the lines are actually funny.  (It may be one of the last movies to be funny without being sarcastic.)  Ryan seems comfortable playing the male equivalent of the bimbo-as-nerd role that is popular in teen sex comedies and Carry On films (count how many minutes in before he is half-naked).  He looks like a quarterback but because he is wearing a bow tie, we know he is really a dork.  Fortunately, Barbra sees through the bow tie and hijinks ensue. 

Finally, both movies include the incomparable Madeline Kahn.  More on our Madeline later.

Willkommen, etc.

Once upon a time, long before Facebook, my brother-in-law developed a website that allowed real friends to share ideas, opinions, and post pictures.  A group of people who were sprinked across Canada and the world were able to keep apprised of each other's lives, tastes, adventures.  Conversation flourished.  Years after Shane's website was launched, Facebook came and overtook it -- not because it was superior but because it was omnipresent and new.  Like Beta to VHS.

I am starting my own blog because I miss how Shane's website felt more like a slow conversation over coffee -- as opposed to Facebook's soundbites yelled across a crowd.  A blog doesn't have all of the features of Shane's website, naturally. But my blog means that I get to chose the topics of conversation. That, as anyone who knows me will tell you, is my favourite part of talking anyway.  Remember, as Fran Lebowitz said, the opposite of talking isn't listening, it's waiting.

This self-absorption, and an overall lack of curiosity, means that I haven't explored how a lot of other blogs "work".  There are some that I read frequently -- Roger Ebert, Perez Hilton, Arianna Huffington, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. So bear with me as I get the hang of it, and as I find my "voice".  And, of course, there is something fundamentally egocentric about a blog, and that requires me to ask for your patience when the blog begins to sound like a constant refrain of Me Me Me.  I am expecting that the blog will provoke discussion -- that, as we say in government, it will be "participatory".

(I should develop a list of ground rules, beginning with: this blog will contain no text that sounds like it has been taken from a Government of Canada document.  It has taken me some time to learn how to write for government - let's see if I can unlearn it when I chose.)

This blog will discuss movies, books, other media and sometimes current events.  It won't go into the minutiae of my life.  I will also post pictures of Ryan Phillippe.  In fact, I considered composing a whole blog about Ryan P., but there was too much to say, frankly.  (Plus, Spoiler alert: recent pictures lead me to believe RP is beginning to look like Ryan O'Neal.  And not Ryan O'Neal circa Paper Moon, if you catch my drift.)  That gets me thinking, actually.

Next post: "Ryan's Hope: the film career parallels of Ryan O'Neal and Ryan Phillippe